Origin of the historical popularity of supersymmetry

Establish whether the historical popularity of supersymmetric WIMP models was chiefly caused by the expectation that the Standard Model would soon be superseded by experimentally accessible Beyond-Standard-Model physics.

Background

The paper argues that supersymmetric WIMPs now receive a less favourable methodological assessment because decades of null experimental results have weakened confidence in naturalness and in the expectation of imminent Beyond-Standard-Model discoveries.

The authors offer an explicitly conjectural explanation for the historical prominence of supersymmetry: researchers expected the Standard Model to be replaced soon and regarded supersymmetry as a particularly promising component of that successor theory. The passage presents this as a conjecture rather than an established historical conclusion.