Particle Physics Seminar: Exploring dark sectors at FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC

Abstract:

New physics has traditionally been expected in the high-pT region at high-energy collider experiments.

If new particles are light and weakly-coupled, however, this focus may be completely misguided, as light particles are produced predominantly in the forward region, typically within a few mrad of the beam line. Such particles are often long-lived, and can propagate through matter without interacting, before decaying. At the high-energies of the LHC, their propagation distances are enhanced, and can be relatively long on LHC scales.

In this talk I will present FASER, the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC: a detector placed 485 m downstream from the ATLAS interaction point along the beam-axis, in the unused TI12 tunnel.

Even with a small and inexpensive cylindrical detector, FASER would have a new physics discovery potential in a swath of currently unconstrained parameter-space which is comparable to, and complementary to, much larger proposed experiments. FASER is expected to be installed during Long-Shutdown 2 of the LHC (2019-2020), in time to take data during Run3 (2021-2023).

In the talk, I will explore the theoretic aspects, and will report the on some of the recent experimental developments.

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Nissan Itzhaki