Sensitivity to millicharged particles in future proton-proton collisions at the LHC with the milliQan detector
A. Ball (CERN, Geneva CH-1211, Switzerland); J. Brooke (University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TH, United Kingdom); C. Campagnari (University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA); M. Carrigan (The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43218, USA); M. Citron (University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA); et al - Show all 29 authors
We report on the expected sensitivity of dedicated scintillator-based detectors at the LHC for elementary particles with charges much smaller than the electron charge. The dataset provided by a prototype scintillator-based detector is used to characterize the performance of the detector and provide an accurate background projection. Detector designs, including a novel slab detector configuration, are considered for the data taking period of the LHC to start in 2022 (Run 3) and for the high luminosity LHC. With the Run 3 dataset, the existence of new particles with masses between 10 MeV and 45 GeV could be excluded at 95% confidence level for charges between 0.003 e and 0.3 e, depending on their mass. With the high luminosity LHC dataset, the expected limits would reach between 10 MeV and 80 GeV for charges between 0.0018 e and 0.3 e, depending on their mass.