Discovering neutrino tridents at the Large Hadron Collider

Journal article

Neutrino trident production of dilepton pairs is well recognized as a sensitive probe of both electroweak physics and physics beyond the Standard Model. Although a rare process, it could be significantly boosted by such new physics, and it also allows the electroweak theory to be tested in a new regime. We demonstrate that the forward neutrino physics program at the Large Hadron Collider offers a promising opportunity to measure for the first time, dimuon neutrino tridents with a statistical significance exceeding 5⁢𝜎, improving on the previous claims at the  ∼3⁢𝜎 level by the CHARM-II and CCFR collaborations while accounting for additional backgrounds later identified by the NuTeV collaboration. We present predictions for various proposed experiments and outline a specific experimental strategy to identify the signal and mitigate backgrounds, based on “reverse tracking” dimuon pairs in the FASER⁢𝜈⁢2 detector. We also discuss prospects for constraining beyond Standard Model contributions to neutrino trident rates at high energies.

Authors: Altmannshofer, W; Mäkelä, T; Sarkar, S; Trojanowski, S; Xie, K

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Volume: 110
• Issue: 7
• Article number: 072018
• Publication date: 2024-10-28
• Acceptance date: 2024-10-02
• DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.110.072018
• EISSN: 2470-0029
• ISSN: 2470-0010
• Language: English