Search for a compressed supersymmetric spectrum with a light gravitino

Presence of the light gravitino as dark matter candidate in a supersymmetric (SUSY) model opens up interesting collider signatures consisting of one or more hard photons together with multiple jets and missing transverse energy from the cascade decay. We investigate such signals at the 13 TeV LHC in presence of compressed SUSY spectra, consistent with the Higgs mass as well as collider and dark matter constraints. We analyse and compare the discovery potential in different benchmark scenarios consisting of both compressed and uncompressed SUSY spectra, considering different levels of compression and intermediate decay modes. Our conclusion is that compressed spectra upto 2.5 TeV are likely to be probed even before the high luminosity run of LHC. Kinematic variables are also suggested, which offer distinction between compressed and uncompressed spectra yielding similar event rates for photons + multi-jets + [inline-graphic not available: see fulltext].