The LHC as a TeV Muon Beam Dump: Muonphilic Scalars at FASER

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Abraham, Roshan Mammen, Fieg, Max
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Abraham, Roshan Mammen
Fieg, Max
author_facet Abraham, Roshan Mammen
Fieg, Max
contents The FASER experiment was designed to study long-lived dark sector particles and neutrinos traveling in the forward direction at the LHC. Neutrinos are predominantly produced from meson decays, which also result in an intense energetic flux of muons in the forward direction regularly observed by FASER. So far, these muons are treated only as backgrounds to neutrino and new physics studies, and extensive effort is required to suppress them. In this study, we consider the opposite scenario and use muons produced in the forward direction to produce new muonphilic scalars, which can then be searched for at the FASER detector. To minimize the backgrounds for this search, we make use of an upgraded preshower component, which is expected to be installed at FASER before the end of Run 3, and is capable of spatially resolving two energetic photons. We find that FASER, and its upgrade, FASER2 can probe currently unconstrained regions of parameter space, including regions that can potentially explain the $(g-2)_μ$ anomaly. This highlights the physics opportunities that the intense TeV muon beam at the LHC can bring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_09071
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The LHC as a TeV Muon Beam Dump: Muonphilic Scalars at FASER
Abraham, Roshan Mammen
Fieg, Max
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Experiment
The FASER experiment was designed to study long-lived dark sector particles and neutrinos traveling in the forward direction at the LHC. Neutrinos are predominantly produced from meson decays, which also result in an intense energetic flux of muons in the forward direction regularly observed by FASER. So far, these muons are treated only as backgrounds to neutrino and new physics studies, and extensive effort is required to suppress them. In this study, we consider the opposite scenario and use muons produced in the forward direction to produce new muonphilic scalars, which can then be searched for at the FASER detector. To minimize the backgrounds for this search, we make use of an upgraded preshower component, which is expected to be installed at FASER before the end of Run 3, and is capable of spatially resolving two energetic photons. We find that FASER, and its upgrade, FASER2 can probe currently unconstrained regions of parameter space, including regions that can potentially explain the $(g-2)_μ$ anomaly. This highlights the physics opportunities that the intense TeV muon beam at the LHC can bring.
title The LHC as a TeV Muon Beam Dump: Muonphilic Scalars at FASER
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Experiment
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09071