Search for high-mass exclusive diphoton production with tagged protons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search is presented for high-mass exclusive diphoton production via photon-photon fusion in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV in events where both protons survive the interaction. The analysis utilizes data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 103 fb${}^{-1}$ collected in 2016-2018 with the central CMS detector and the CMS and TOTEM precision proton spectrometer (PPS). Events that have two photons with high transverse momenta ($p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\gamma }$ $>$ 100 GeV), back-to-back in azimuth, and with a large diphoton invariant mass ($m_{\gamma \gamma }$ $>$ 350 GeV) are selected. To remove the dominant inclusive diphoton backgrounds, the kinematic properties of the protons detected in PPS are required to match those of the central diphoton system. Only events having opposite-side forward protons detected with a fractional momentum loss between 0.035 and 0.15 (0.18) for the detectors on the negative (positive) side of CMS are considered. One exclusive diphoton candidate is observed for an expected background of 1.1 events. Limits at 95% confidence level are derived for the four-photon anomalous coupling parameters $|{\zeta }_1|$ $<$ 0.073 TeV${}^{-4}$ and $|{\zeta }_2|$ $<$ 0.15 TeV${}^{-4}$, using an effective field theory. Additionally, upper limits are placed on the production of axion-like particles with coupling strength to photons $f^{-1}$ that varies from 0.03 TeV${}^{-1}$ to 1 TeV${}^{-1}$ over the mass range from 500 to 2000 GeV.

arXiv commentReplaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/EXO-21-007 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (31)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• The anti-k_t jet clustering algorithm
• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• FastJet user manual
• Confidence Level Computation for Combining Searches with Small Statistics
• Particle-flow reconstruction and global event description with the CMS detector
• The CMS trigger system
• The Physics of Ultraperipheral Collisions at the LHC
• Collider Probes of Axion-Like Particles
• Extraction and validation of a new set of CMS PYTHIA8 tunes from underlying-event measurements
• Performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Precision luminosity measurement in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016 at CMS
• Electron and photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC
• Performance of photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV
• Searching for axion-like particles with ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions
• Evidence for light-by-light scattering and searches for axion-like particles in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Observing light-by-light scattering at the Large Hadron Collider
• Light-by-Light Scattering Constraint on Born-Infeld Theory
• Pileup mitigation at CMS in 13 TeV data
• Observation of light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector
• LHC Forward Physics
• Light-by-light scattering with intact protons at the LHC: from Standard Model to New Physics
• Searching for axion-like particles with proton tagging at the LHC
• Exclusive physics at the LHC with SuperChic 2
• Observation of proton-tagged, central (semi)exclusive production of high-mass lepton pairs in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer
• New physics searches with heavy-ion collisions at the LHC
• First search for exclusive diphoton production at high mass with tagged protons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Search for an axion-like particle with forward proton scattering in association with photon pairs at ATLAS
• Proton reconstruction with the CMS-TOTEM Precision Proton Spectrometer
• Search for high-mass exclusive $\gamma \gamma$ $\to$ WW and $\gamma \gamma$ $\to$ ZZ production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV
• Radion and Higgs Signals in Peripheral Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Leptophilic Axion-like Particles at Forward Detectors
• The LHC as an Axion-Photon Collider