Constraints on asymmetric production of long-lived scalars at the Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production of long-lived particles with different masses or lifetimes at the LHC, proposing a toy model and recasting existing ATLAS data to set new constraints on asymmetric LLP production.

Contribution

It introduces a simple parametrized model for asymmetric LLP production and demonstrates how to derive constraints from existing experimental data.

Findings

Constraints on production cross-section times branching fraction for asymmetric LLPs

Demonstration of recasting ATLAS displaced jet search for asymmetric scenarios

Analysis of various mass and lifetime combinations for LLPs

Abstract

Searches for pair-produced long-lived particles (LLPs) at the LHC commonly operate under the assumption that the two LLPs are identical. In this paper we entertain the possibility that the targeted final states are, instead, induced by a LLP pair with different masses and/or lifetimes. We propose a simple and intuitively-parametrised toy model in order to study such asymmetric production of LLPs. Using the recasting material of a recent search for displaced jets by the ATLAS collaboration, we demonstrate that we can set constraints on the production cross-section times branching fraction into jets for a variety of asymmetric LLP and mediator mass combinations.