Observation of $\tau$ lepton pair production in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV

Abstract

We present an observation of photon-photon production of $\tau$ lepton pairs in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions. The measurement is based on a data sample with an integrated luminosity of 404 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ collected by the CMS experiment at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The $\gamma\gamma$ $\to$ $\tau^+\tau^-$ process is observed for $\tau\tau$ events with a muon and three charged hadrons in the final state. The measured fiducial cross section is $\sigma(\gamma\gamma$ $\to$ $\tau^+\tau^-)$ = 4.8 $\pm$ 0.6 (stat) $\pm$ 0.5 (syst) $\mu$b, in agreement with leading-order QED predictions. Using $\sigma(\gamma\gamma$ $\to$ $\tau^+\tau^-)$, we estimate a model-dependent value of the anomalous magnetic moment of the $\tau$ lepton of $a_\tau$ = 0.001 $^{+0.055}_{-0.089}$.