Constraining magnetic monopoles and multiply charged particles with diphoton events at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper uses LHC data on photon pair production to set new constraints on the existence of magnetic monopoles and highly charged particles, excluding masses up to tens of TeV.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using light-by-light scattering measurements to probe exotic particles like monopoles and HECOs at high energies.

Findings

Excluded monopole and HECO masses up to a few tens of TeV.

Employed resummation techniques for large HECO-photon couplings.

Provided complementary constraints to direct searches.

Abstract

The LHC is achieving energies never reached before, opening up possibilities for the discovery of exotic particles in the TeV mass range. Such states include magnetic monopoles, which can explain the electric charge quantisation and restore the symmetry in Maxwell's equations with respect to the magnetic and electric fields. Scenarios proposed to shed light to dark matter and neutrino masses introduce high-electric-charge objects (HECOs). The existence of both classes of particles can be probed in precision measurements in a manner complementary to direct searches. We focus on the contributions of such virtual particles to light-by-light scattering in the context of effective field theories and a Born-Infeld scenario. Specifically, measurements of central exclusive production of photon pairs with proton tagging carried out by the CMS-TOTEM Precision Proton Spectrometer with LHC Run 2 proton-proton collision data are used to constrain magnetic monopole and HECOs. Resummation techniques have been employed to deal with the large HECO-photon coupling. Masses of up to a few tens of TeV have been excluded for monopoles and HECOs of various spins and magnetic and electric charges, respectively.