Illuminating stealth scenarios at the LHC

Several ideas exist on how the stringent mass limits from LHC on new colored particles can be avoided. One idea are the so-called “stealth” scenarios in which missing transversal energy (ET) is avoided due a peculiar mass configuration. It is usually assumed that the cascade decay of the dominantly produced colored particle finishes in a two-body decay, where this mass configuration leads to a very small amount of ET. We discuss here the potential impact of other decay channels, either loop-induced or via off-shell mediators. It is shown that those channels already become important even for moderate branching ratios of 10%. Larger branching ratios, in particular, into a photon can completely wash out all benefits of the stealth setup. We discuss this in a model-independent form, but also at the simplest supersymmetry stealth scenario which can be realized in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model.