Tracking down Quirks at the Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for detecting quirky particles at the LHC by identifying co-planar hits in tracker layers, enabling efficient searches even with high pile-up, and demonstrates significant discovery potential for various quirk models.

Contribution

A novel approach to search for non-helical quirky tracks at the LHC that does not require trajectory fitting, improving detection efficiency amidst pile-up.

Findings

High detection efficiency (~70%) for quirky signals.

Discovery potential for string tension between 100 eV and 30 keV.

Ability to discover colored quirks up to 1600 GeV and electroweak quirks up to 650 GeV.

Abstract

Non-helical tracks are the smoking gun signature of charged and/or colored quirks, which are pairs of particles bound by a new, long-range confining force. We propose a method to efficiently search for these non-helical tracks at the LHC, without the need to fit their trajectories. We show that the hits corresponding to quirky trajectories can be selected efficiently by searching for co-planar hits in the inner layers of the ATLAS and CMS trackers, even in the presence of on average 50 pile-up vertices. We further argue that backgrounds from photon conversions and unassociated pile-up hits can be removed almost entirely, while maintaining a signal reconstruction efficiency as high as 70%. With the 300 fb$^{-1}$ dataset, this implies a discovery potential for string tension between 100 eV and 30 keV, and colored (electroweak charged) quirks as heavy as 1600 (650) GeV may be discovered.