Accessing the core of naturalness, nearly degenerate higgsinos, at the LHC

Abstract: The presence of two light higgsinos nearly degenerate in mass is one of the important characteristics of supersymmetric models meeting the naturalness criteria. Probing such higgsinos at the LHC is very challenging, in particular when the mass-splitting between them is less than 5 GeV. In this study, we analyze such a degenerate higgsino scenario by exploiting the high collinearity between the two muons which originate from the decay of the heavier higgsino into the lighter one and which are accompanied by a high-p_T QCD jet. Using our method, we can achieve a statistical significance ∼ 2.9 σ as well as S/B ∼ 17% with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb⁻¹ at the 14 TeV LHC, for the pair production of higgsinos with masses 124 GeV and 120 GeV. A good sensitivity can be achieved even for a smaller mass-splitting when the higgsinos are lighter.