Discovery prospects for long-lived multiply charged particles at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the detection prospects of long-lived, multiply charged particles at the LHC, considering various charges, spins, and bound states, providing mass bounds for future experimental runs.

Contribution

It offers a largely model-independent analysis of detecting long-lived multiply charged particles, including bounds from multiple LHC experiments for different charges and states.

Findings

ATLAS and CMS have stronger sensitivities than MoEDAL at Run 3.

Sensitivity of ATLAS and CMS may be competitive at HL-LHC for certain charges.

Lower mass bounds are estimated for various particle types and charges.

Abstract

In this work, we aim to provide a comprehensive and largely model independent investigation on prospects to detect long-lived multiply charged particles at the LHC. We consider particles with spin 0 and $\frac{1}{2}$, with electric charges in range $1 \le |Q/e| \le 8$, which are singlet or triplet under $SU(3)_C$. Such particles might be produced as particle-antiparticle pairs and propagate through detectors, or form a positronium(quarkonium)-like bound state. We consider both possibilities and estimate lower mass bounds on new particles, that can be provided by ATLAS, CMS and MoEDAL experiments at the end of Run 3 and HL-LHC data taking periods. We find out that the sensitivities of ATLAS and CMS are generally stronger than those of MoEDAL at Run 3, while they may be competitive at HL-LHC for $3 \lesssim |Q/e| \lesssim 7$ for all types of long-lived particles we consider.