A New Source of Millicharged Particles: Secondary Showers in the LHC Forward Absorber
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866913125887901696 |
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| author | Adhikary, Jyotismita Li, Peiran Liu, Zhen Trojanowski, Sebastian Zabihi, Azam |
| author_facet | Adhikary, Jyotismita Li, Peiran Liu, Zhen Trojanowski, Sebastian Zabihi, Azam |
| contents | Millicharged particles (mCPs) are a well-motivated target for far-forward searches at the Large Hadron Collider. We identify and quantify a significant new source of these particles: secondary production in hadronic and electromagnetic showers initiated by energetic neutral particles striking the TAXN absorber. By combining Monte Carlo simulations with \texttt{Geant4}-based modeling, we show that these secondary cascades yield a substantial mCP flux that complements the primary production from the interaction point. For the proposed FORMOSA detector, this contribution can enhance the expected signal yield by approximately $50\%$ for $m_χ\lesssim 0.1~\textrm{GeV}$. Our results demonstrate that secondary production in downstream infrastructure is an essential ingredient for realistic sensitivity projections and new-physics searches at the High-Luminosity LHC. The simulated secondary spectra are made publicly available to facilitate future forward physics studies. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_13964 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A New Source of Millicharged Particles: Secondary Showers in the LHC Forward Absorber Adhikary, Jyotismita Li, Peiran Liu, Zhen Trojanowski, Sebastian Zabihi, Azam High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment Millicharged particles (mCPs) are a well-motivated target for far-forward searches at the Large Hadron Collider. We identify and quantify a significant new source of these particles: secondary production in hadronic and electromagnetic showers initiated by energetic neutral particles striking the TAXN absorber. By combining Monte Carlo simulations with \texttt{Geant4}-based modeling, we show that these secondary cascades yield a substantial mCP flux that complements the primary production from the interaction point. For the proposed FORMOSA detector, this contribution can enhance the expected signal yield by approximately $50\%$ for $m_χ\lesssim 0.1~\textrm{GeV}$. Our results demonstrate that secondary production in downstream infrastructure is an essential ingredient for realistic sensitivity projections and new-physics searches at the High-Luminosity LHC. The simulated secondary spectra are made publicly available to facilitate future forward physics studies. |
| title | A New Source of Millicharged Particles: Secondary Showers in the LHC Forward Absorber |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13964 |