Supersymmetric partners of oblique corrections Original Research Article

We discuss the violation of the equality of the gauge coupling and gaugino coupling in the presence of soft supersymmetry breaking. Although this is a hard supersymmetry breaking effect, there are finite contributions to this difference that can be determined as a function of the soft supersymmetry breaking masses. The largest sources of this difference are the “super-oblique” corrections, which can be enhanced by a multiplicity factor and a logarithm of the soft supersymmetry breaking mass. This is to be contrasted to standard oblique corrections to the electroweak sector, which decouple for large supersymmetry breaking. We show that these parameters can be relatively large, particularly in models of supersymmetry breaking motivated by solving the supersymmetric flavor problem. We also perform a detailed study of the non-oblique corrections for the example of squark decay. We find that they can be significant, and should be accounted for in the theoretical prediction.