Gluino pair production at the LHC: The threshold

The next-to-leading order analysis of the cross section of hadronic gluino pair production close to threshold is presented. Within the framework of non-relativistic QCD a significant enhancement compared to fixed order perturbation theory is observed which originates from the characteristic remnant of the IS peak below the nominal pair threshold. This enhancement is similar to the corresponding one for top production. However, as a consequence of the larger color factor of the QCD potential the effect is significantly enhanced. The analysis includes all color configurations of S-wave gluino pairs, i.e. singlet, symmetric and antisymmetric octet, decuplet and twenty-seven representation. Matching coefficients involving real and virtual radiation are separately evaluated for all color and spin configurations and initial states. We concentrate on the case of gluino decay rates comparable to the gluino binding energy. The non-relativistic dynamics of the gluino pair is solved by calculating the Green's function in NLO. Numerical results for the Large Hadron Collider at root s = 14 TeV and 7 TeV are presented for various characteristic scenarios. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.