The SHiP experiment at CERN

TL;DR

The SHiP experiment at CERN aims to search for light long-lived exotic particles, dark photons, and heavy neutrinos using a high-intensity proton beam, potentially shedding light on dark matter and baryogenesis.

Contribution

This paper presents the current status and design of the SHiP experiment, a novel fixed-target setup to explore hidden portals and light exotic particles at CERN.

Findings

Design of a detector with vacuum tank, spectrometer, and particle ID detectors.

Projected sensitivity to dark photons, light scalars, and heavy neutrinos.

Potential to probe parameter space relevant for baryogenesis and neutrino mass explanations.

Abstract

The current status of the proposed SHiP experiment at the CERN Beam Dump Facility is presented. SHiP is a general-purpose fixed-target experiment. The 400 GeV/$c$ proton beam extracted from the SPS will be dumped on a heavy target to integrate $2 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target in five years. The detector, based on a long vacuum tank followed by a spectrometer and particle identification detectors, will allow to probe a variety of models with light long-lived exotic particles and masses below ${\cal O}(10)$ GeV/$c^2$. The main focus will be the physics of the so-called hidden portals, i.e. the search for dark photons, light scalars and pseudo-scalars, and heavy neutrinos. The sensitivity to heavy neutrinos will allow to probe, in the mass range between the kaon and the charm meson mass, a coupling range for which baryogenesis and active neutrino masses could also be explained. A second dedicated detector will study neutrinos and explore light dark matter.