Detecting long-lived particles trapped in detector material at the LHC

Abstract

We propose to implement a two-stage detection strategy for exotic long-lived particles that could be produced at the CERN LHC, become trapped in detector material, and decay later. The proposed strategy relies on an array of metal rods, combined to form a high-density target. In a first stage, the rods are exposed to radiation from LHC collisions in one of the experimental caverns. In a second stage, they are individually immersed in liquid argon in a different experimental hall, where out-of-time decays could produce a detectable signal. Using a benchmark case of long-lived gluino pair production, we show that this experiment would be sensitive to a wide range of masses. Such an experiment would have unique sensitivity to gluino-neutralino mass splittings down to 3 GeV, in previously uncovered particle lifetimes ranging from days to years.