Constraints on a Long-Lived X17 Vector Boson with FASER
The ATOMKI anomalies motivate the possibility of a new particle, the X17, with a mass of 17 MeV and weak couplings to nuclei and electrons. Such a particle may be produced at the LHC, travel 480 m in the far-forward direction, and decay to $e^+e^-$ in FASER. In this paper, previous FASER searches for dark photons and axion-like particles (ALPs) are combined and interpreted as searches for a candidate X17 particle, the protophobic vector boson. The searches use data collected from $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13.6$ TeV in LHC Run 3 from 2022 for the dark photon search and from 2022-2023 for the ALP search. No excess events are found above the expected background, and the combined null results exclude a previously-unconstrained "low-coupling window" with electron coupling $6 \times 10^{-5} < ε_e < 1.2 \times 10^{-4}$. A "high-coupling window" remains.