A supersymmetric solution to the KARMEN time anomaly

Abstract

We interpret the KARMEN time anomaly as being due to the production of a (dominantly bino) neutralino with mass 33.9 MeV, which is the lightest supersymmetric particle but decays into 3 leptons through the violation of R-parity. For independent gaugino masses M_1 and M_2 we find regions in the (M_1, M_2, mu, tan beta) parameter space where such a light neutralino is consistent with all experiments. Future tests of this hypothesis are outlined.

13 pages, 7 postscript figures Note added commenting on recent NuTeV search for unstable particle emitted in pion decay; Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D