What is supersymmetry?

Supersymmetry is, at present, a theoretical physical principle that looks to extend the Standard Model but also help explain the problems that physicists still face with the Standard Model. Originally hypothesised in the 1970s, supersymmetry has been refined over forty years and, although no supersymmetric particles have been found yet, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider are continuing to recreate the high-energy collisions that offer the best chance of discovering these elusive supersymmetric partners.

In supersymmetry, every fundamental particle in the Standard Model has a superpartner of the same mass and charge. If supersymmetry was unbroken symmetry, each of the fundamental particles superpartners would have the same mass and charge as their fundamental particle and would only differ by their spin the difference being . For example, a selectron (the electrons superpartner) would have a charge of -1e, just like the electron, a (rest) mass of 9.111031 kg, just like the electron, but a spin of 0. This change of spin causes fermions, like leptons and baryons, to become bosons and bosons to become fermions. Unbroken supersymmetry is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: In unbroken supersymmetry, all superpartners have the same mass as their fundamental particle equivalent.

However, if supersymmetry was as described above, scientists would have discovered long ago if there were any other particles with the same mass and charge of the electron.

There being no direct proof of the existence of superpartners has resulted in scientists concluding that supersymmetry is, in reality, broken symmetry. Broken symmetry, in this sense, should be viewed as symmetry existing but being hidden by some invisible entity. In supersymmetry, this invisible entity is the Higgs Field. What the Higgs Field has done is pushed the sparticles up the mass scale resulting in them having too high a mass to have been recreated. Figure 2 shows the Minimal Realistic Version of the Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).

Figure 2: In MSSM, all the superpartners have been pushed up the mass scale.

Supersymmetry, some argue, was hypothesised as a means of a solution to physics greatest problems. One of these problems is that associated with dark matter. Dark matter makes up about 84% of the universes matter and 23% of the mass-energy. As dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light or any another electromagnetic radiation, in order for a particle to be considered to be a candidate for dark matter it must be electrically neutral, otherwise it would disperse light and, therefore, would not be dark. Supersymmetry offers three particles the Light Superparticles (LSP) that can be considered candidates for dark matter candidates: sneutrinos, neutralinos and gravitinos. Sneutrino dark matter, however, has already been ruled out, as its interactions with the Z boson would have been detected by now were it to be dark matter. Neutralino dark matter is the more probable form of dark matter. As the neutralino is both a weakly

interacting massive particle a particle that does not interact through the strong or electromagnetic force and stable particle, it is a perfect candidate for dark matter. The final supersymmetric particle that can be considered a dark matter particle is the gravitino. Should the gravitino be stable and have a mass in the TeV range, it can be considered an LSP and therefore a candidate for dark matter and, from that, scientists will be able to conclude that gravitinos were present in the early universe.

Supersymmetry can also be used to unify the three gauge interactions and gravity. If supersymmetry is used in calculations, the forces unify at the energy of approximately 2x1016 GeV an energy not high enough within the realms of the Standard Model but possible within the supersymmetric realms. This unification of the forces occurs at a scale below the Planck scale, where gravity is predicted to become strong. At this scale, the strength of the gravitational force is similar to the strength of the other forces. For example, at this scale, the gravitational force between two protons is roughly equal to the electrical force between them causing physicists to conclude that, at these energy scales, the forces are related. Thus, in a supersymmetric world it may be possible to unify all the forces.

Although no superpartners have been found yet and it [supersymmetry] has been put in hospital1 by the recent decay of a Bs meson into two muons, scientists continue to remain optimistic about supersymmetry. Indeed many would like to say we have found half of the MSSM in the Standard Model and we are now trying to find the other half.

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BBC News (2012) Popular physics theory running out of hiding places Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20300100

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