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Over the last couple of years I've seen several articles talk about hints or bumps in the data that might point to Supersymmetry. An article in NewScientist from Summer 2012 discussed the discovery of the Higgs at 125 GeV as providing some support for the theory:

"This is very good news for people who believe in supersymmetry," says Howard Baer of the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He's one of several researchers who have calculated what the suspected Higgs mass could mean for SUSY particle, or sparticle, detections at the LHC...Baer reckons it can explain why sparticles have not yet been seen. Particles get their masses by interacting with the Higgs field; the stronger the interaction, the heavier the particle. So if the Higgs is confirmed at 125 GeV, which is heavy for SUSY models, many superpartners must be on the heavy side too. Baer and colleagues calculated that in several different versions of SUSY, a 125-GeV Higgs means squarks (the SUSY version of quarks) and sleptons (SUSY versions of electrons and neutrinos) must weigh 10,000 GeV or more, far too heavy for the LHC's detectors to find...That's not to say the LHC won't find any sparticles, though. Given the new estimated mass of the Higgs, Baer calculates that the gluino - superpartner to the gluon, which carries the force that holds atomic nuclei together - could be as light as 500 to 1000 GeV. The LHC is already probing this range, albeit not for gluinos specifically. Light gluinos won't be detected directly, but by the particles they decay into.

Another possible super-quarry is the stop, the superpartner of the top quark. In some models of supersymmetry, there are two stops, one monstrously heavy and another relatively light. According to Marcela Carena at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, and colleagues, a 125-GeV Higgs could put the light stop between 100 and 130 GeV, easily visible at the LHC."

I would love for there to be some chance that one of these proposed sparticles could indeed be discovered, but I wasn't sure where things stand as of now, and science reporting in the media is notoriously brutal.

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    $\begingroup$ Heh, I have nothing to add, but Howie Baer taught my undergrad high-energy class, and I have to read this quote in his outrageous Wisconsin accent. $\endgroup$
    – zeldredge
    Commented May 28, 2015 at 14:08
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    $\begingroup$ Be aware that CDF and D0 are still analyzing their data years after the Tevetron shut down, taken apart and bits of it chopped up and put on display in the lobby of the highrise. "Absolutely no hints of [...] in the data" is too high a standard to expect for the 3.5 and 4 TeV data for another decade or more. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented May 28, 2015 at 17:11
  • $\begingroup$ @dmckee: Some CDF and D0 folks are analyzing their old data because they don't have anything else to analyze. I would warn against mistaking the cruel realities of physicists who are in/out of the main loop (of current LHC data) for a physics signal. IMHO, if LHC doesn't find a strong signal, we have to seriously re-think our strategy for the next machine. Incremental advances beyond the TeV range probably won't do it. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented May 28, 2015 at 19:47
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    $\begingroup$ @Curious Certainly they'll still working on that data because they aren't part on a LHC experiment, but they are still getting new things from it. The depth of the data from these big experiments and the analytic cleverness of the physicist who run them is staggering and too easily underestimated. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented May 28, 2015 at 21:11
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    $\begingroup$ For an update on the status of susy and how it fits into the string landscape, see arXiv:2002.03013 . $\endgroup$
    – Howie
    Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 15:53

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The experiments, both CMS and ATLAS report 2.5 and 3 sigma candidates, but not at the same spot/channel.

The place to look is at Cern's document server , asking for "supersymmetric" for example in conjunction with CMS or Atlas. This general talk is about limits .

Lubos Motl in his blog discusses an Atlas 3 sigma possible excess and there are links there. Theorists are already working on it.

There is still hope :).

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    $\begingroup$ I asked some theorists about this about 20 years ago and they expressed great skepticism about the LHC finding anything of fundamental importance beyond the Higgs... I hope you are right, otherwise this will be the most expensive almost-null-experiment we have ever built! $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented May 28, 2015 at 19:42
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    $\begingroup$ @CuriousOne . Not really. The most expensive experiments in the world are carried out during wars and preparations for wars. A single aircraft carrier costs to the US about half of the total expenses of the LHC (and the LHC is built by many countries). And I talked to theorists fifteen years ago who were hopeful the signs will be there. A year ago too, different ones and different signs. arxiv.org/pdf/1407.8120.pdf look at page 59 fig 7 $\endgroup$
    – anna v
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 3:19
  • $\begingroup$ I am not disagreeing with you about the relative cost of science, but my comment was kind of restricted to the high energy physics community. "We" are usually not in the business of making or preparing for war, that's a totally different department. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 3:59
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    $\begingroup$ @CuriousOne I view the money spent on large colliders as the percent of their GDP ancients spent in building the Parthenon or the medievals building cathedrals.Such large GDP expenses should be compared to other collective efforts that eat large slices of the GDP, as preparations for war. imo of course $\endgroup$
    – anna v
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 4:03
  • $\begingroup$ You would be totally right except for one little problem: when the cathedrals were built virtually 100% of all people who paid for them were believers of the same faith, moreover, those "contributions" weren't made trough the means of democratic societies but they were extracted under threats of bodily harm. Today science in general and physics in particular fascinates only a small sliver of the population and when we are asking the taxpayers to contribute to our interests, we find ourselves in a very different situation than the builders of the cathedrals were. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 4:23

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