Search for resonant pair production of neutral long-lived particles decaying to bbbar in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for pairs of long-lived neutral particles decaying into bottom quark pairs in proton-antiproton collisions, setting limits on production rates without observing a significant signal.

Contribution

First search for resonant pair production of neutral long-lived particles decaying to bbbar in proton-antiproton collisions at Tevatron energies.

Findings

No significant excess above background observed.

Upper limits set on production rates for various Higgs and NLLP masses and lifetimes.

Analysis demonstrates the sensitivity of displaced vertex searches for long-lived particles.

Abstract

We report on a first search for resonant pair production of neutral long-lived particles (NLLP) which each decay to a bbbar pair, using 3.6 fb^-1 of data recorded with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We search for pairs of displaced vertices in the tracking detector at radii in the range 1.6--20 cm from the beam axis. No significant excess is observed above background, and upper limits are set on the production rate in a hidden-valley benchmark model for a range of Higgs boson masses and NLLP masses and lifetimes.