# What are “hidden valley sectors”?

In this end of the year article, Prof. Strassler mentioned that hidden valley sectors could lead to some still open loopholes concerning the experimental discovery of supersymmetry and other BSM physics at the LHC such as certain kinds of extra dimensions for example. He only explains that these hidden valley sectors are some kind of an extension of minimal supersymmetric models and he does not explain this further when I ask him in the comments.

So I want to ask here:

What exactly are these hidden valley sectors, and how are they related to some kinds of minimal supersymmetric models, such as the MSSM for example? Are they rather ad hoc additions to the minimal models or are they embeded in some theories valid at higher energies?

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Thanks for debugging my question @twistor59 ;-), my typing was once more faster than my thinking ... –  Dilaton Dec 31 '12 at 0:17

and the paper above, references 1-6, show you the origin of these papers; 6 are stringy constructions. The models may be supersymmetric but they don't have to be. The "valley" refers to some place in the hidden dimensions of spacetime where an additional gauge group $G$ added as a factor to the Standard Model is localized. The new states are uncharged under the Standard Model and only charged under the new gauge group.