| Supersymmetry (SUSY) remains the most well-motivated scenario for new physics beyond the Standard Model. There is strong reason to expect that if nature is supersymmetric it will be observed at the LHC. Consequently, searches for SUSY are among the primary tasks of the LHC program. However, much of this work focuses on scenarios such as mSUGRA, which include many simplifying assumptions. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the broader SUSY parameter space, and explore the implications of various other model choices on the spectrum of possible experimental signatures. This thesis addresses this phenomenologically challenging problem. We present several studies that examine the relationship between various SUSY scenarios and experimental phenomena, and introduce new techniques to extract meaningful information about fundamental parameters. First, we discuss identification of multiple top quark production from gluino decay at the LHC. We find that 4-top production can be discovered in excess of Standard Model backgrounds with ∼500pb-1 of data. We argue that statistical reconstruction of this scenario is extremely difficult due to large combinatorical uncertainty. We demonstrate a novel approach whereby information about the gluino decay fraction into top quarks may be extracted with low luminosity, thus providing early evidence for multi-top production. Next, we investigate the problem of identifying gaugino mass unification from LHC measurements. We consider mirage-mediation models, where gaugino mass universality is controlled by a single parameter alpha (alpha → 0 gives the universal limit). We show that by utilizing a chi2-like metric on the signature space it is possible to detect non-universality to alpha ≃ 0.3 with only a few fb-1 of data for the majority of the parameter space. Finally, we examine the excess positron flux reported by the HEAT, AMS, and PAMELA experiments. We argue that annihilation of light (200 GeV), non-thermally produced wino-like LSP WIMPS can explain the excesses. However we find this candidate does not convincingly model the recent PAMELA measurements if traditional astrophysical propagation parameters are assumed. |
