A search for an excited muon decaying to a muon and two jets in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A new search signature for excited leptons is explored. Excited muons are sought in the channel $pp \to μμ^* \to μμ\textrm{ jet jet}$, assuming both the production and decay occur via a contact interaction. The analysis is based on 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV taken with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No evidence of excited muons is found, and limits are set at the 95% confidence level on the cross section times branching ratio as a function of the excited-muon mass $m_{μ^*}$. For $m_{μ^*}$ between 1.3 TeV and 3.0 TeV, the upper limit on $σB(μ^* \to μq \bar{q}$) is between 0.6 and 1 fb. Limits on $σB$ are converted to lower bounds on the compositeness scale $Λ$. In the limiting case $Λ= m_{μ^*}$, excited muons with a mass below 2.9 TeV are excluded. With the same model assumptions, these limits at larger $μ^*$ masses improve upon previous limits from traditional searches based on the gauge-mediated decay $μ^* \to μγ$.