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Searches for long lived neutral particles

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Abstract

An intriguing possibility for TeV scale physics is the existence of neutral long lived particles (LOLIPs) that subsequently decay into SM states. Such particles are many cases indistinguishable from missing transverse energy (MET) at colliders. We propose new methods to search for these particles using neutrino telescopes. We study their detection prospects, assuming production either at the LHC or through dark matter (DM) annihilations in the Sun and the Earth. We find that the sensitivity for LOLIPs produced at the LHC is limited by luminosity and detection energy thresholds. On the other hand, in the case of DM annihilation into LOLIPs, the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes is promising and may extend beyond the reach of upcoming direct detection experiments. In the context of low scale hidden sectors weakly coupled to the SM, such indirect searches allow to probe couplings as small as 10−15.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, U.S.A.

    Patrick Meade

  2. School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 08540, U.S.A.

    Patrick Meade

  3. Tel Aviv University, Sackler School Faculty of Sciences, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Shmuel Nussinov

  4. Schmid Science Center Chapman University, Orange, California, 92866, U.S.A.

    Shmuel Nussinov

  5. School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 08540, U.S.A.

    Michele Papucci & Tomer Volansky

Authors
  1. Patrick Meade
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  2. Shmuel Nussinov
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  3. Michele Papucci
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  4. Tomer Volansky
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Correspondence to Tomer Volansky.

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ArXiv ePrint: 0910.4160

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Meade, P., Nussinov, S., Papucci, M. et al. Searches for long lived neutral particles. J. High Energ. Phys. 2010, 29 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2010)029

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