Interpreting a CMS $lljjp_T^{\rm miss}$ Excess With the Golden Cascade of the MSSM

Understand

The CMS experiment recently reported an excess consistent with an invariant mass edge in opposite-sign same flavor (OSSF) leptons, when produced in conjunction with at least two jets and missing transverse momentum.

• We provide an interpretation of the edge in terms of (anti-)squark pair production followed by the `golden cascade' decay for one of the squarks: $\tilde q \rightarrow \tilde\chi_2^0 q \to \tilde l l q \to \tilde\chi_1^0 q l l$ in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM).
• A simplified model involving binos, winos, an on-shell slepton, and the first two generations of squarks fits the event rate and the invariant mass edge.
• We check consistency with a recent ATLAS search in a similar region, finding that much of the good-fit parameter space is still allowed at the 95% confidence level (CL).