Production of heavy charged particles in proton-proton ultraperipheral collisions at the Large Hadron Collider: survival factor

TL;DR

This paper calculates survival factors and cross sections for producing heavy charged particles in ultraperipheral proton-proton collisions at the LHC, highlighting the impact of proton size on event cleanliness.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute survival factors considering proton finite size effects for heavy charged particle production at the LHC.

Findings

Survival factors decrease with increasing proton size.

Cross sections for heavy charged particle production are quantified.

Finite proton size significantly affects event probabilities.

Abstract

Ultraperipheral collisions of high energy protons are a source of approximately real photons colliding with each other. Photon fusion can result in production of yet unknown charged particles in very clean events. The cleanliness of such an event is due to the requirement that the protons survive during the collision. Finite sizes of the protons reduce the probability of such outcome compared to point-like particles. We calculate the survival factors and cross sections for the production of heavy charged particles at the Large Hadron Collider.