No Arabic abstract
We review the theoretical motivations and experimental status of searches for stable massive particles (SMPs) which could be sufficiently long-lived as to be directly detected at collider experiments. The discovery of such particles would address a number of important questions in modern physics including the origin and composition of dark matter in the universe and the unification of the fundamental forces. This review describes the techniques used in SMP-searches at collider experiments and the limits so far obtained on the production of SMPs which possess various colour, electric and magnetic charge quantum numbers. We also describe theoretical scenarios which predict SMPs and the phenomenology needed to model their production at colliders and interactions with matter. In addition, the interplay between collider searches and open questions in cosmology is addressed.
The theoretical motivation for exotic stable massive particles (SMPs) and the results of SMP searches at non-collider facilities are reviewed. SMPs are defined such that they would be sufficiently long-lived so as to still exist in the cosmos either as Big Bang relics or secondary collision products, and sufficiently massive to be beyond the reach of any conceivable accelerator-based experiment. The discovery of SMPs would address a number of important questions in modern physics, such as the origin and composition of dark matter in the Universe and the unification of the fundamental forces. This review outlines the scenarios predicting SMPs and the techniques used at non-collider experiments to look for SMPs, eg in cosmic rays and bound in matter. The limits so far obtained on the fluxes and matter densities of SMPs which possess various detection-relevant properties such as electric and magnetic charge are given.
Using an effective field theory approach for higher-spin fields, we derive the interactions of colour singlet and electrically neutral particles with a spin higher than unity, concentrating on the spin-3/2, spin-2, spin-5/2 and spin-3 cases. We compute the decay rates and production cross sections in the main channels for spin-3/2 and spin-2 states at both electron-positron and hadron colliders, and identify the most promising novel experimental signatures for discovering such particles at the LHC. The discussion is qualitatively extended to the spin-5/2 and spin-3 cases. Higher-spin particles exhibit a rich phenomenology and have signatures that often resemble the ones of supersymmetric and extra-dimensional theories. To enable further studies of higher-spin particles at collider and beyond, we collect the relevant Feynman rules and other technical details.
Various types of electroweak-interacting particles, which have non-trivial charges under the $mathrm{SU}(2)_L times mathrm{U}(1)_Y$ gauge symmetry, appear in various extensions of the Standard Model. These particles are good targets of future lepton colliders, such as the International Linear Collider (ILC), the Compact LInear Collider (CLIC) and the Future Circular Collider of electrons and positrons (FCC-ee). An advantage of the experiments is that, even if their beam energies are below the threshold of the production of the new particles, quantum effects of the particles can be detected through high precision measurements. We estimate the capability of future lepton colliders to probe electroweak-interacting particles through the quantum effects, with particular focus on the wino, the Higgsino and the so-called minimal dark matters, and found that a particle whose mass is greater than the beam energy by 100-1000 GeV is detectable by measuring di-fermion production cross sections with $O(0.1)$% accuracy. In addition, with the use of the same analysis, we also discuss the sensitivity of the future colliders to model independent higher dimensional operators, and found that the cutoff scales corresponding to the operators can be probed up to a few ten TeV.
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 $gtrsim 100$ $mu text{m}$. To that end, we consider a metastable gluino as an example, and study the impact of this new event-selection cut on gluino searches at the LHC by simulating both the signal and Standard Model background processes. Uncertainty of the displaced-vertex reconstruction due to the limited resolution of track reconstruction is taken into account. We also discuss possibilities for optimization of the kinematic selection criteria, which takes advantage of significant reduction of background through the requirement of displaced vertices. In addition, we demonstrate that using the method discussed in this paper it is possible to measure the lifetime of metastable particles with an ${cal O}(1)$ accuracy at the high-luminosity LHC. Implications for a future 100 TeV collider are also studied, where produced particles tend to be more boosted and thus it is easier to detect the longevity of metastable particles.
Axion-like particles (ALPs) are pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons of spontaneously broken global symmetries in high-energy extensions of the Standard Model (SM). This makes them a prime target for future experiments aiming to discover new physics which addresses some of the open questions of the SM. While future high-precision experiments can discover ALPs with masses well below the GeV scale, heavier ALPs can be searched for at future high-energy lepton and hadron colliders. We discuss the reach of the different proposed colliders, focusing on resonant ALP production, ALP production in the decay of heavy SM resonances, and associate ALP production with photons, Z bosons or Higgs bosons. We consider the leading effective operators mediating interactions between the ALP and SM particles and discuss search strategies for ALPs decaying promptly as well as ALPs with delayed decays. Projections for the high-luminosity run of the LHC and its high-energy upgrade, CLIC, the future $e^+e^-$ ring-colliders CEPC and FCC-ee, the future pp colliders SPPC and FCC-hh, and for the MATHUSLA surface array are presented. We further discuss the constraining power of future measurements of electroweak precision parameters on the relevant ALP couplings.