Prospects for slepton pair production in the future $e^-e^+$ Higgs factories

Abstract

The Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) with a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 240 GeV is proposed to serve as a Higgs factory, while it can also provide good opportunity for new physics searches at lower energy, which are difficult in hadron colliders but well-motivated by some theory models such as dark matter. This paper presents the sensitivity study of direct stau / smuon production at CEPC using full Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. With the assumption of flat 5% systematic uncertainty, the CEPC has the potential to discover the production of combined left-handed and right-handed stau up to 116 GeV if exists, or up to 113 GeV for the production of pure left-handed / right-handed stau; the discovery potential of direct smuon reaches up to 117 GeV with the same assumption. Due to the conserved assumption of systematic uncertainty and limited reliance on the reconstruction and detector geometry in this study, the results can be used as reference for similar searches in other electron positron colliders at a center-of-mass energy close to 240 GeV, such as Future Circular Collider $e^{+}e^{-}$ (FCC-ee) and the International Linear Collider (ILC).