Flavour and CP violation in supersymmetry

After the shutdown of the large electron-positron collider at CERN, the search for CP violation and flavour changing neutral current (FCNC) phenomena acquired a privileged role in our quest for new physics beyond the electroweak standard model (SM). Most extensions of the SM exhibit new sources of CP violation and FCNC. In particular, the minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM presents several new phases and flavour structures in addition to those already present in the SM. Therefore, supersymmetry may have a good chance to manifest some departure from the SM in this particularly challenging class of rare phenomena. On the other hand, it is also apparent that CP violation and FCNC generally represents a major constraint on any attempt at model building beyond the SM. In this work, we review the status of FCNC and CP violation in supersymmetric extensions of the SM and discuss the possibilities of these indirect searches in the quest for supersymmetry.