Search for heavy long-lived charged particles with large ionization energy loss in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for heavy, long-lived charged particles with high ionization energy loss in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV, using CMS data, finding no significant excess and setting upper limits on various hypothetical particles' production cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces two novel methods for detecting long-lived charged particles and provides the first interpretation of a Z' boson decaying to doubly charged tau' leptons.

Findings

No significant excess observed above background.

Set 95% CL upper limits on production cross sections.

First interpretation of Z' boson decaying to doubly charged leptons.

Abstract

A search for heavy, long-lived, charged particles with large ionization energy loss within the silicon tracker of the CMS experiment is presented. A data set of proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV, collected in 2017 and 2018 at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb$^{-1}$, is used in this analysis. Two different approaches for the search are taken. A new method exploits the independence of the silicon pixel and strips measurements, while the second method improves on previous techniques using ionization to determine a mass selection. No significant excess of events above the background expectation is observed. The results are interpreted in the context of the pair production of supersymmetric particles, namely gluinos, top squarks, and tau sleptons, and of the Drell-Yan pair production of fourth generation ($\tau'$) leptons with an electric charge equal to or twice the absolute value of the electron charge ($e$). An interpretation of a Z$'$ boson decaying to two $\tau'$ leptons with an electric charge equal to 2$e$ is presented for the first time. The 95% confidence upper limits on the production cross section are extracted for each of these hypothetical particles.