We study the LHC sensitivity to probe a long-lived heavy neutrino $N$ in the context of $Z'$ models. We focus on displaced vertex signatures of $N$ when pair produced via a $Z'$, decaying to leptons and jets inside the inner trackers of the LHC experiments. We explore the LHC reach with current long-lived particle search strategies for either one or two displaced vertices in association with hadronic tracks or jets. We focus on two well-motivated models, namely, the minimal $U(1)_{B-L}$ scenario and its $U(1)_{X}$ extension. We find that searches for at least one displaced vertex can cover a significant portion of the parameter space, with light-heavy neutrino mixings as low as $|V_{lN}|^2\approx 10^{-17}$, and $l=e,μ$ accessible across GeV scale heavy neutrino masses.
We study the sensitivity of displaced vertex searches for heavy neutrinos produced in W boson decays in the LHC detectors ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. We also propose a new search that uses the muon chambers to detect muons from heavy neutrino decays outside the tracker. The sensitivity estimates are based on benchmark models in which the heavy neutrinos mix exclusively with one of the three Standard Model generations. In the most sensitive mass regime the displaced vertex searches can improve existing constraints on the mixing with the first two Standard Model generations by more than four orders of …
Sterile neutrinos with masses in the range (1-100) GeV, have been searched for in a variety of experiments. Here, we discuss the prospects to search for sterile neutrinos at the LHC using displaced vertices. Two different cases are discussed: (i) the standard model extended with sterile neutrinos and (ii) right-handed neutrinos in a left-right symmetric extension of the standard model. A dedicated displaced vertex search will allow to probe parts of the parameter space not accessible to other searches, but will require large luminosity in both cases.
Soft displaced leptons are representative collider signatures of compressed dark sectors with feeble couplings to the standard model. Prime targets are dark matter scenarios where co-scattering or co-annihilation sets the relic abundance upon freeze-out. At the LHC, searches for soft displaced leptons are challenged by a large background from hadron or tau lepton decays. In this article, we present an analysis tailored for displaced leptons with a low transverse momentum threshold at 20 GeV. Using a neural network, we perform a comprehensive analysis of the event kinematics, including a study …
A signature often found in non-minimal Higgs sectors is Higgs decay to a new gauge-singlet scalar, followed by decays of the singlets into Standard Model fermions through small mixing angles. The scalar decay can naturally be displaced from the primary vertex. The present experimental constraints on such models are extremely weak, due to low (or zero) trigger rates for the resulting low $p_T$ displaced jets. In this letter, we highlight the advantages of integrating into the trigger system massively parallel computing and coprocessors based on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) or the Many Integ…
Particles with a sub-millimeter decay length appear in many models of physics beyond the Standard Model. However, their longevity has been often ignored in their LHC searches and they have been regarded as promptly-decaying particles. In this letter, we show that, by requiring displaced vertices on top of the event selection criteria used in the ordinary search strategies for promptly-decaying particles, we can considerably extend the LHC reach for particles with a decay length of $\gtrsim 100~μ{\rm m}$. We discuss a way of reconstructing sub-millimeter displaced vertices by exploiting the sam…
In the context of Left-Right symmetry, we revisit the Keung-Senjanović production of right-handed $W_R$ bosons and heavy neutrinos $N$ at high energy colliders. We develop a multi-binned sensitivity measure and use it to estimate the sensitivity for the entire range of $N$ masses, spanning the standard and merged prompt signals, displaced vertices and the invisible $N$ region. The estimated sensitivity of the LHC with 300/fb integrated luminosity ranges from 5 to beyond 7 TeV, while the future 33(100) TeV collider's reach with 3/ab extends to 12(26) TeV.
We investigate the reach at the LHC to probe light sterile neutrinos with displaced vertices. We focus on sterile neutrinos $N$ with masses $m_{N} \sim $ (5-30) GeV, that are produced in rare decays of the Standard Model gauge bosons and decay inside the inner trackers of the LHC detectors. With a strategy that triggers on the prompt lepton accompanying the $N$ displaced vertex and considers charged tracks associated to it, we show that the 13 TeV LHC with $3000$/fb is able to probe active-sterile neutrino mixings down to $|V_{lN}|^2\approx 10^{-9}$, with $l=e,μ$, which is an improvement of up…
It is very easy to write down models in which long-lived particles decaying to standard model states are pair-produced via Higgs decays, resulting in the signature of approximately back-to-back pairs of displaced narrow hadronic jets and/or lepton jets at the LHC. The LHC collaborations have already searched for such signatures with no observed excess. This paper describes a Monte Carlo method to reinterpret the searches. The method relies on (ideally multidimensional) efficiency tables, thus we implore collaborations to include them in any future work. Exclusion regions in mixing-mass paramet…
The LHC has placed stringent limits on superpartner masses, in conflict with naturalness. R-parity violation is one of the few scenarios that allows reduction of these limits and is thus worth significant exploration at the LHC. We demonstrate that if the R-parity violating operator UDD is used, we generically expect all SUSY events at the LHC to have displaced vertices. If a squark is the LSP, it will have a short displaced vertex. If any other particle is the LSP, the displaced vertex is naturally expected to be quite long, possibly even outside the detectors. These scenarios are already con…
The "$μ$ from $ν$" supersymmetric standard model ($μν$SSM) cures the $μ$-problem and concurrently reproduces measured neutrino data by using a set of usual right-handed neutrino superfields. Recently, the LHC has revealed the first scalar boson which naturally makes it tempting to test $μν$SSM in the light of this new discovery. We show that this new scalar while decaying to a pair of unstable long-lived neutralinos, can lead to a distinct signal with non-prompt multileptons. With concomitant collider analysis we show that this signal provides an unmistakable signature of the model, pronounced…
We revisit discovery prospects for a long-lived sterile neutrino $N$ at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the context of left-right symmetric theories. We focus on a displaced vertex search strategy sensitive to $\mathcal{O}$(GeV) neutrino masses produced via a right-handed $W_{R}$ boson. Both on-shell and off-shell Drell-Yan production of $W_{R}$ are considered. We estimate the reach as a function of $m_{N}$ and $m_{W_{R}}$. With $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV and 300/fb of integrated luminosity, the LHC can probe neutrino masses as high as $\sim 30$ GeV and $m_{W_{R}}$ around 6 TeV. The reach goes up to…
In this paper, we study the prospect of ECAL barrel timing to develop triggers dedicated to long-lived particles decaying to jets, at the level-1 of HL-LHC. We construct over 20 timing based variables, and identify three of them which have better performances and are robust against increasing PU. We estimate the QCD prompt jet background rates accurately using the "stitching" procedure for varying thresholds defining our triggers, and compute the signal efficiencies for different LLP scenarios for a permissible background rate. The trigger efficiencies can go up to $\mathcal{O}(80\%)$ for the …
We explore the sensitivity of displaced vertex searches at LHCb for testing sterile neutrino extensions of the Standard Model towards explaining the observed neutrino masses. We derive estimates for the constraints on sterile neutrino parameters from a recently published displaced vertex search at LHCb based on run 1 data. They yield the currently most stringent limit on active-sterile neutrino mixing in the sterile neutrino mass range between 4.5 GeV and 10 GeV. Furthermore, we present forecasts for the sensitivities that could be obtained from the run 2 data and also for the high-luminosity …
Within the framework of the $μν$SSM, a displaced dilepton signal is expected at the LHC from the decay of a tau left sneutrino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) with a mass in the range $45 - 100$ GeV. We compare the predictions of this scenario with the ATLAS search for long-lived particles using displaced lepton pairs in $pp$ collisions, considering an optimization of the trigger requirements by means of a high level trigger that exploits tracker information. The analysis is carried out in the general case of three families of right-handed neutrino superfields, where all the neut…
We consider minimal Gauge Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking models at which the next to lightest supersymmetric particle is a neutralino with a large enough decay length to be detected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We analyze the potential of the LHCb experiment to determine the discovery reach for such models and found that the LHCb will be able to probe such models up to the energy breaking scale of Λ= 130 TeV.
We study the LHC discovery potential in the search for heavy neutral leptons (HNL) with a new signature: a displaced shower in the CMS muon detector, giving rise to a large cluster of hits forming a displaced shower. A new Delphes module is used to model the CMS detector response for such displaced decays. We reinterpret a dedicated CMS search for neutral long-lived particles decaying in the CMS muon endcap detectors for the minimal HNL scenario. We demonstrate that this new strategy is particularly sensitive to active-sterile mixings with $τ$ leptons, due to hadronic $τ$ decays. HNL masses be…
The generation of the asymmetric cosmic baryon abundance requires a departure from thermal equilibrium in the early universe. In a large class of baryogenesis models, the baryon asymmetry results from the out-of-equilibrium decay of a new, massive particle. We highlight that in the interesting scenario where this particle has a weak scale mass, this out-of-equilibrium condition requires a proper decay length larger than O(1) mm. Such new fields are within reach of the LHC, at which they can be pair produced leaving a distinctive, displaced-vertex signature. This scenario is realized in the rec…
Heavy Neutral Leptons are naturally present in many well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. If their mass is of few dozens of GeVs, they can be long-lived and lead to events with displaced vertices, giving rise to promising signatures due to the low background. We revisit the opportunities offered by the LHC to discover these long-lived states via searches with displaced vertices. We study in particular the implication on the parameter space sensitivity when all mixings to active flavors are taken into account.
The LHCb detector provides accurate vertex reconstruction and hadronic particle identification, which make the experiment an ideal place to look for light long-lived particles (LLP) decaying into Standard Model (SM) hadrons. In contrast with the typical search strategy relying on energetic jets and a high multiplicity of tracks from the LLP decay, LHCb can identify LLPs in exclusive, specific hadronic final states. To illustrate the idea, we study the sensitivity of LHCb to an exotic Higgs decay $h\to SS$, followed by the displaced decay of GeV-scale scalars into charged kaons $S\to K^+K^-$. W…
We study the Singlet-Doublet dark matter model in the regime of feeble couplings, where the dark matter abundance is obtained via the freeze-in mechanism. As a consequence of the small couplings, the heavier particles in the model are long-lived with decay length at typical scales of collider experiments. We analyse the collider signatures of the model, characterised by displaced $h$ and $Z$ bosons plus missing momentum, employing current LHC searches for displaced vertices and missing energy to significantly constrain the parameter space of the model. We also take into account the cosmologica…
We explore the possibility of having superpartners of triplet Higgs bosons, named as 'triplinos'. They form a part of light neutralinos and charginos in a $Y=0$ extended supersymmetric Standard Model. For this model such electroweakinos do not have direct couplings to the Standard Model fermions. On top of that, due to very compressed spectrum for lighter neutralinos and charginos, their decay products coming from three body decays are very soft and thus can evade the current collider bounds. These decays are particularly interesting since they give rise to displaced leptonic signatures. We ca…
We investigate the potential reach of a search for a long-lived/prompt dark vector boson $Z_D$, also called dark $Z$, and a prompt dark Higgs boson $h_D$ through exotic decays of the observed Higgs boson $h$ into either $Z_DZ_D$, $h_Dh_D$, or $ZZ_D$ with $Z$ being the hypercharge gauge boson. The $Z_D$ production through the Higgs portal is completed via one of two mechanisms, kinetic mixing of $Z_D$ with $Z$ and the mixing of $h_D$ with $h$. All production modes of $h$ are considered, while the branching fractions are calculated in Monte Carlo simulation using the {\textsc{MadGraph5}}\_aMC@NL…
Heavy neutral leptons are present in many well-motivated beyond the Standard Model theories, sometimes being accessible at present colliders. Depending on their masses and couplings they could be long-lived and lead to events with displaced vertices, and thus to promising signatures due to low Standard Model background. We revisit the potential of the LHC to discover this kind of new particles via searches for displaced vertices, which can probe masses of few GeV for mixings currently allowed by experimental constraints. We also discuss the importance of considering all the possible production…
Many models of new physics beyond the Standard Model are able to describe massive, long-lived particles with macroscopic decays, which can be reconstructed as displaced vertices inside the inner trackers of the LHC experiments. In addition, the lack of evidence of any new physics at the LHC motivates to perform more unconventional searches, such as looking for displaced vertices. I comment on the 13 TeV LHC reach with a proposed multitrack displaced vertex search strategy to probe light sterile neutrinos. Limits on active-sterile neutrino mixing are presented.
Higgsino has been intensively searched for in the LHC experiments in recent years. Currently, there is an uncharted region beyond the LEP Higgsino mass limit where the mass splitting between the neutral and charged Higgsinos is around $0.3$-$1$ GEV, which is unexplored by either the soft di-lepton or disappearing track searches. This region is, however, of great importance from a phenomenological point of view, as many supersymmetric models predict such a mass spectrum. In this letter, we propose a possibility of filling this gap by using a soft micro-displaced track on top of the mono-jet eve…
If physics beyond the Standard Model contains metastable new particle states, its signatures may manifest themselves at the LHC through the presence of displaced vertices or displaced tracks. Such signatures are common in low-scale supersymmetry breaking scenarios as well as a host of other well-studied new physics models. Here we analyze the kinematics of dual cascade decays with missing energy resulting from a stable non-interacting new particle state at the bottom of the decay chain. We find that if the final step of the decay chain involves a metastable particle, the resulting presence of …
We investigate the pair production of right-handed neutrinos from the decay of a light $B-L$ scalar in the $U(1)_{B-L}$ model. The $B-L$ scalar mixes to the SM Higgs, and the physical scalar is required to be lighter than the observed Higgs. The produced right-handed neutrinos are predicted to be long-lived according to the type-I seesaw mechanism, and yield potentially distinct signatures such as displaced vertex and time-delayed leptons at the CMS/ATLAS/LHCb, as well as signatures at the far detectors including the CODEX-b, FACET, FASER, MoEDAL-MAPP and MATHUSLA. We analyze the sensitivity r…
In this article, we explore the possibility of displaced Higgs production from the decays of the heavy fermions in the Type-III seesaw extension of the Standard Model at the LHC/FCC and the muon collider. The displaced heavy fermions and the Higgs boson can be traced back by measuring the displaced charged tracks of the charged leptons along with the $b$-jets. A very small Yukawa coupling can lead to two successive displaced decays which makes the phenomenology even more interesting. The prospects of the transverse and longitudinal displaced decay lengths are extensively studied in the context…
The inclusion of heavy neutral leptons to the Standard Model particle content could provide solutions to many open questions in particle physics and cosmology. The modification of the charged and neutral currents from active-sterile mixing of neutral leptons can provide novel signatures in Standard Model processes. We revisit the displaced vertex signature that could occur in collisions at the LHC via the decay of heavy neutral leptons with masses of a few GeV emphasizing the implications of flavor, kinematics, inclusive production and number of these extra neutral fermions. We study in partic…
The recent discovery, by the LHCb collaboration, of the $Ξ_{cc}^{++}$ doubly charmed baryon, has renewed interest in the spectroscopy of doubly heavy hadrons. Experimentally, however, searches for such states appear highly challenging. The reconstructed final states tend to involve multiple heavy flavoured (beauty or charm) hadrons, so the yield for any exclusive decay mode will be suppressed to unobservably low levels by the product of several branching fractions, each of which is typically $10^{-3}$--$10^{-2}$. Noting that decays of double beauty hadrons are the only possible source of $B_c^…
The QCD axion is a well-motivated addition to the standard model to solve the strong $C\!P$ problem. If the axion acquires mass dominantly from a hidden sector, it can be as heavy as $O(1)$ GeV, and the decay constant can be as low as $O(100)$ GeV without running into the axion quality problem. We propose new search strategies for such heavy QCD axions at the Belle II experiment, where the axions are expected to be produced via $B\to K a$. We find that a subsequent decay $a\to 3π$ with a displaced vertex leads to a unique signal with essentially no background, and that a dedicated search can e…
We study the signal of long-lived sterile neutrino at the LHC produced through the decay of the $W$ boson. It decays into charged lepton and jets. The characteristic signature is a hard prompt lepton and a lepton from the displaced decay of the sterile neutrino, which leads to a bundle of displaced tracks with large transverse impact parameter. Different from other studies, we neither reconstruct the displaced vertex nor place requirement on its invariant mass to maintain sensitivity for low sterile neutrino masses. Instead, we focus on the displaced track from the lepton. A difficulty for low…
The Twin Higgs mechanism keeps the scalar sector of the Standard Model (SM) natural while remaining consistent with the non-observation of new colored particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this construction the heavy twin Higgs boson provides a portal between the SM particles and the twin sector, but is quite challenging to discover at colliders. In the Fraternal Twin Higgs setup, where light twin quarks are absent, we study a novel discovery channel for the heavy twin Higgs boson by considering its decay to a pair of light Higgs bosons, one of which subsequently decays to glueball …
We analyze models of extended Gauge Mediation in the context of the NMSSM, concentrating on supersymmetric spectra with light gluinos, low fine-tuning and decays of the lightest neutralino leading to displaced vertices. While the minimal scenario has rather heavy gluinos as a result of restrictions from the Higgs sector, we propose two new models in which the gluino can be as light as allowed by direct searches at the LHC, with a mass of about 1.7 TeV and 2.0 TeV, respectively. Both models have a tuning of a few permille, and lead to an interesting phenomenology due to a light singlet sector. …
Long-lived particles can manifest themselves at the LHC via "displaced vertices" - several charged tracks originating from a position separated from the proton interaction point by a macroscopic distance. Here we demonstrate a potential of the muon trackers at the CMS experiment for displaced vertex searches. We use heavy neutral leptons and Chern-Simons portal as two examples of long-lived particles for which the CMS muon tracker can provide essential information about their properties.
The observation of Higgs decays into heavy neutrinos would be strong evidence for new physics associated to neutrino masses. In this work we propose a search for such decays within the Type I seesaw model in the few-GeV mass range via displaced vertices. Using 300 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, at 13 TeV, we explore the region of parameter space where such decays are measurable. We show that, after imposing pseudorapidity cuts, there still exists a region where the number of events is larger than $\mathcal{O}(10)$. We also find that conventional triggers can greatly limit the sensitivity …
The apparent absence of light superpartners at the LHC strongly constrains the viability of the MSSM as a solution to the hierarchy problem. These constraints can be significantly alleviated by R-parity violation (RPV). Bilinear R-parity violation, with the single operator L H_u, does not require any special flavor structure and can be naturally embedded in a GUT while avoiding constraints from proton decay (unlike baryon-number-violating RPV). The LSP in this scenario can be naturally long-lived, giving rise to displaced vertices. Many collider searches, particularly those selecting b-jets or…
We examine the observability of heavy neutrino (nu_h) signatures of a U(1)' enlarged Standard Model (SM) encompassing three heavy Majorana neutrinos alongside the known light neutrino states at the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We show that heavy neutrinos can be rather long-lived particles producing distinctive displaced vertices that can be accessed in the CERN LHC detectors. We concentrate here on the gluon fusion production mechanism gg -> H_{1,2} -> nu_h nu_h, where H_1 is the discovered SM-like Higgs and H_2 is a heavier state, yielding displaced leptons following nu_h decays into wea…
As the majority of LHC searches are focused on prompt signatures, specific long-lived particles have the potential to be overlooked by the otherwise systematic new physics programs at ATLAS and CMS. While in many cases long-lived superparticles are now stringently constrained by existing exotic searches, we point out that the highly motivated model of gauge mediation with staus as the next-to-lightest superparticle (NLSP) has received less attention. We recast LHC searches for heavy stable charged particles, disappearing tracks, and opposite-flavor leptons with large impact parameters to asses…
We study a supersymmetric phenomenon that can give spectacular signals at the LHC: oscillations of neutralinos. Such oscillations can be naturally realised in R-symmetric models, where additional fields are introduced as Dirac mass partners of gauginos and Higgsinos. Majorana masses for gauginos, necessarily generated from anomaly mediation, can create tiny mass splittings between degenerate mass eigenstates, causing states produced at the LHC to oscillate between neutralinos and their Dirac partner fields. Scenarios where such states decay with displaced vertices can lead to striking signatur…
We study bino-wino coannihilation scenario in the so-called spread or mini-split supersymmetry. We show that, in this model, a neutral wino has a macroscopic decay length in a wide range of parameter space. This characteristic feature could be observed as a displaced vertex plus missing transverse energy event at the LHC. In this paper, we study the current constraints and future prospects on the scenario based on the displaced vertex search performed by the ATLAS collaboration. It is found that a sizable parameter region can be probed at the 8 TeV LHC run. This search strategy will considerab…
Electron proton (ep) colliders could provide particle collisions at TeV energies with large data rates while maintaining the clean and pile~up-free environment of lepton colliders, which makes them very attractive for heavy neutrino searches. Heavy (mainly sterile) neutrinos with masses around the electroweak scale are proposed in low scale seesaw models for neutrino mass generation. In this paper, we analyse two of the most promising signatures of heavy neutrinos at ep colliders, the lepton-flavour violating (LFV) lepton-trijet signature and the displaced vertex signature. In the considered b…
We study discovery prospects for long-lived sterile neutrinos at the LHC with multitrack displaced vertices, with masses below the electroweak scale. We reinterpret current displaced vertex searches making use of publicly available, parametrized selection efficiencies for modeling the detector response to displaced vertices. We focus on production of right-handed $W_{R}$ bosons and neutrinos $N$ in a left-right symmetric model, and find poor sensitivity. After proposing a different trigger strategy (considering the prompt lepton accompanying the neutrino displaced vertex) and optimized cuts in…
Probing displaced (dark)photons from low reheating freeze-in at the LHC
Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad San Sebastián（塞巴斯蒂安大学工程学院）；Millennium Institute for Subatomic Physics at the High-Energy Frontier (SAPHIR)（高能前沿亚原子物理千年研究所（SAPHIR））；Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile（智利天主教大学物理研究所）；Instituto de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República（共和国大学理学院物理研究所）；Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú（秘鲁天主教大学科学院物理组）
A variety of new-physics models predict metastable particles whose decay length is $\lesssim 1$ mm. Conventional displaced-vertex searches are less sensitive to this sub-millimeter decay range, and thus such metastable particles have been looked for only in usual prompt decay searches. In this paper, we show that an additional event-selection cut based on the vertex reconstruction using charged tracks considerably improves the sensitivity of ordinary searches which rely only on kinematic selection criteria, for particles with a decay length of $\gtrsim 100$ $μ\text{m}$. To that end, we conside…
We study displaced signatures of sneutrino pairs potentially emerging at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model supplemented with right-handed neutrinos triggering a Type-I seesaw mechanism. We show how such signatures can be established through a heavy Higgs portal in the presence of both leptonic and hadronic decays of the sneutrinos. We finally illustrate how the Yukawa parameters of the latter can be extracted from fitting kinematical quantities pertaining to the corresponding two displaced vertices, thereby characterising the dynamics of the und…
In this paper, we point out a novel signature of physics beyond the Standard Model which could potentially be observed both at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and at future colliders. This signature, which emerges naturally within many proposed extensions of the Standard Model, results from the multiple displaced vertices associated with the successive decays of unstable, long-lived particles along the same decay chain. We call such a sequence of displaced vertices a "tumbler." We examine the prospects for observing tumblers at the LHC and assess the extent to which tumbler signatures can be d…
