Discovery potential for supersymmetry in CMS

This work summarizes and puts in an overall perspective studies done within the compact muon solenoid (CMS) concerning the discovery potential for squarks and gluinos, sleptons, charginos and neutralinos, supersymmetric (SUSY) dark matter, lightest Higgs, sparticle mass determination methods and the detector design optimization in view of SUSY searches. It represents the status of our understanding of these subjects as of summer 1997. As a benchmark we used the minimal supergravity-inspired supersymmetric standard model (mSUGRA) with a stable lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Discovery of supersymmetry at the large hadron collider should be relatively straightforward. It may occur through the observation of large excesses of events in missing ET plus jets, or with one or more isolated leptons. An excess of trilepton events or isolated dileptons with missing E_T, exhibiting a characteristic signature in the l⁺l^- invariant mass distribution, could also be the first manifestation of SUSY production. Squarks and gluinos can be discovered for masses in excess of 2 TeV. Charginos and neutralinos can be discovered from an excess of events in dilepton or trilepton final states. Inclusive searches can give early indications from their copious production in squark and gluino cascade decays. Indirect evidence for sleptons can also be obtained from inclusive dilepton studies.