Search for Stopped Gluinos in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV at CMS

TL;DR

This paper reports the first search for long-lived gluinos at the LHC, setting new limits on their production and lifetime, with no significant excess observed in the data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel search method for long-lived particles that stop and decay in the detector during quiescent periods, extending sensitivity to a wide range of gluino lifetimes.

Findings

No significant excess above background was observed.

Gluino masses below 370 GeV/c^2 are excluded for certain lifetimes.

Limits are set over 13 orders of magnitude of gluino lifetime.

Abstract

The results of the first search for long-lived gluinos produced in 7 TeV pp collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider are presented. The search looks for evidence of long-lived particles that stop in the CMS detector and decay in the quiescent periods between beam crossings. In a dataset with a peak instantaneous luminosity of 10^-32 /cm^2/s, an integrated luminosity of 10/pb, and a search interval corresponding to 62 hours of LHC operation, no significant excess above background was observed. Limits at the 95% confidence level on gluino pair production over 13 orders of magnitude of gluino lifetime are set. For a mass difference (m_gluino-m_neutralino)>100 GeV/c^2, and assuming BR(gluino-> g neutralino)=100%, m_gluino < 370 GeV/c^2 are excluded for lifetimes from 10^-6 s to 1000 s.