Single top-quark production by direct supersymmetric flavor-changing neutral-current interactions at the LHC

Production of (electrically neutral) heavy-quark pairs, such as tc¯ and t¯c, is extremely suppressed in the SM. In supersymmetric (SUSY) theories, such as the MSSM, the number of these events can be significantly enhanced thanks (mainly) to the FCNC couplings of gluinos. We compute the efficiency of this mechanism for FCNC production of heavy quarks at the LHC. We find that σ(pp→tc¯+t¯c) can reach 1 pb, and therefore one can expect up to 105 events per 100 fb−1 of integrated luminosity (with no counterpart in the SM). Their detection would be instant evidence of new physics, and could be a strong indication of underlying SUSY dynamics.