The light gluino (12–16 GeV) and light sbottom (2–6 GeV) scenario has been used to explain the apparent overproduction of b quarks at the Fermilab Tevatron. This scenario also predicts the decay $\overrightarrow{Z}b\overline{b}\tilde{g}\tilde{g}$ where the gluinos subsequently decay into b quarks and sbottoms. We show that this can contribute to ${\Gamma }_{4b}=\Gamma \left(\overrightarrow{Z}b\overline{b}b\overline{b}\right)$ since most of the sbottoms and b quarks arising from gluino decay have a small angular separation. We find that while no excess in ${\Gamma }_{4b}$ is observable due to large uncertainties in experimental measurements, the ratio $\Gamma \left(\overrightarrow{Z}b\overline{b}\tilde{g}\tilde{g}\right)/\Gamma \left(\overrightarrow{Z}b\overline{b}b\overline{b}\right)$ can be large due to sensitivity to b-quark mass, the sbottom mixing angle and the gluino mass. We calculate it to be in the range 0.05–0.41 inclusive of the entire parameter space.

• Received 17 January 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.67.097703