Search for exotic particles at the LHC. FASER – a new experiment with a Polish accent

The CERN Research Council has approved a new experiment at the Large Hadron Collider called FASER. Its goal is to search for exotic particles that may be related to dark matter. One of the originators of the experiment is Dr. Sebastian Trojanowski of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the National Center for Nuclear Research.

Scientists managing the Large Hadron Collideroin (LHC) have given the green light to build a multidetector, whichory will search for new elementary particles. FASER is to focus on the search for light, extremely weakly interacting particles, whichore have so far eluded scientists.

The concept of the multidetector was proposed by Polish scientist Dr. Sebastian Trojanowski of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the National Center for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) and three coohe physicist working with him on a fellowship at the University of California, Irvineow – reads the NCBJ website.

The new experiment aims to expand the scientific potential of CERN’s gas pedal and infrastructure. It also responds to interest in unknown particles, especiallyolnie those long-lived ones and dark matter.

Scientists hope to find as yet unknown particles through the FASER experiment, whichore can be created in proton collisionsow. Such exotic particles have not yet been recorded due to their weak interaction with the detector’s matter, but scientists expect that they may exist.

– Seven years ago, scientists discovered at the Large Hadron Collideroin the Higgs boson, thus ending a chapter in the search for the fundamental building blocks with which theor which the Universe is built, but now we are looking for new particles – said Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy involved in the project. – The dark matter problem shows that we don’t know what most of the Universe is made of, so we are sure that there are new, as yet unknown particles out there – added.

– Such particles – if they are sufficiently light, if they are created fairly infrequently and, in addition, fly along the axis of the beam of colliding protonsow, may have so far escaped the attention of the experimenterow. It would be difficult, for example, to see them as a clear signal of missing energy in the energy balance productoin collisions. The chance to possibly detect them is to position the detector at a certain distance from the point of production and proba to register the expected productsointo decayow. A prerequisite for the success of such a scenario is that the mass of the particles sought must be greater than the total mass of the lightest productsoin possible decay – for example, electron-positron pairs – explained Dr. Trojanowski, quoted in the announcement on the NCBJ website.

The FASER experiment is scheduled to launch in 2021 and is planned for five years. TeamoThe scientific head of the experiment is to consist of 30-40 researchers from institutions in Europe, China, Japan and the United States. This relatively small compositeol in cfoIn comparison with others operating at the LHC.

The FASER instrument itself is expected to be roinnately compact, which theol. It is supposed to have a diameter of one meter and a length of five metersow. It will be placed at a specific point along the LHC’s 27-kilometer loop, specifically in the service tunnel around pol kilometer from the powerful ATLAS detector, in which theorym the Higgs boson was discovered. The system is to consist of scintillatorsow, magnetow, detectoroin a trace and calorimeter measuring the energy of the productow, if the sought-after decay actually occurs. FASER will collect data whenever the ATLAS detector is operating.

– One of the advantages of our project is that we were able to borrow many components of theow to build FASER – a detectoroin silicon, calorimetersoin and electronics – from already functioning experimentsoat the LHC,” said Jamie Boyd of CERN, roalso involved in the project. This will significantly reduce the cost of building the device.

FASER will search for a set of hypothetical particles, including the so-called „dark photonsow”, or particles, whichore are related to dark matter. Scientists have been searching intensively for years for new, previously unknown forms of matter. Astronomical observations provide an argument that is difficult to disputeow that there is hitherto unknown matter in the Universe, ktora with atoms, with ktorych consist of us and everything we know interacts headownie forces of gravity.

Although this unknown dark matter is calculated to be much more abundant in the Universe than normal matter, so far it has not been observed or produced. The proposed experiment is one of many proposals inspired by this conundrum. Particles, whichorities sought by FASER could be the first element on the road to unraveling it. Possible negative results will also add to our knowledge and rule out someore theoretical concepts – reads the NCBJ website.