FASER (ForwArd Search ExpeRiment) is planned to be one of the eight particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is designed to both search for new light and weakly coupled elementary particles, and to study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos.
The experiment is planned to be located in the service tunnel TI12, which is 480 m downstream from the interaction point used by the ATLAS experiment. This tunnel was formerly used to inject the beam from the SPS into the LEP accelerator, but does currently not host any LHC infrastructure. In this location, the FASER experiment is placed into an intense and highly collimated beam of both neutrinos as well as possible new particles. Additionally, it is shielded from ATLAS by about 100 meters of rock and concrete, providing a low background environment. The FASER experiment was approved in 2019 and will start taking data in 2021.[1][2]
New physics searches
The primary goal of the FASER experiment is to search for new light and weakly interacting particles, that have not been discovered yet, such as dark photons, axion-like particles and sterile neutrinos.[3][4] If these particles are sufficiently light, they can be produced in rare decays of hadrons. Such particles will therefore be dominantly produced in the forward direction along the collision axis, forming a highly collimated beam, and can inherit a large fraction of the LHC proton beam energy. Additionally, due to their small couplings to the standard model particles and large boosts, these particles are long-lived and can easily travel hundreds of meters without interacting before they decay to standard model particles. These decays lead to a spectacular signal, the appearance of highly energetic particles, which FASER aims to detect.
Neutrino physics
The LHC is the highest energy particle collider built so far, and therefore also the source of the most energetic neutrinos created in a controlled laboratory environment. Collisions at the LHC lead to a large flux of high-energy neutrinos of all flavours, which are highly collimated around the beam collision axis and stream through the FASER location. The dedicated sub-detector FASERν is designed to detect these neutrinos.[5] It will record and study thousands of neutrino interactions, which allows to measure neutrino cross sections at TeV energies where they are currently unconstrained.
Detector
Layout of the FASER detector
Located at the front end of FASER is the FASERν neutrino detector. It consists of many layers of emulsion films interleaved with tungsten plates as target material for neutrino interactions. Behind FASERν and at the entrance to the main detector is a charged particle veto consisting of plastic scintillators.[6][7] This is followed by a 1.5 meter long empty decay volume and a 2 meter long spectrometer, which are placed in a 0.55 T magnetic field. The spectrometer consists of three tracking stations, composed of layers of precision silicon strip detectors, to detect charged particles produced in the decay of long-lived particles. Located at the end is an electromagnetic calorimeter.
References
"FASER: CERN approves new experiment to look for long-lived, exotic particles". CERN. Retrieved 2019-12-19.
"FASER's new detector expected to catch first collider neutrino". CERN. Retrieved 2019-12-19.
Feng, Jonathan L.; Galon, Iftah; Kling, Felix; Trojanowski, Sebastian (2018-02-05). "FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC". Physical Review D. 97 (3): 035001.arXiv:1708.09389. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.035001. ISSN 2470-0010.
Ariga et al. (FASER Collaboration) (2019-05-15). "FASER's Physics Reach for Long-Lived Particles". Physical Review D. 99 (9): 095011.arXiv:1811.12522. Bibcode:2019PhRvD..99i5011A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.095011. ISSN 2470-0010.
Abreu et al. (FASER collaboration) (2020). "Detecting and Studying High-Energy Collider Neutrinos with FASER at the LHC". The European Physical Journal C. 80 (1): 61.arXiv:1908.02310. Bibcode:2020EPJC...80...61A. doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-7631-5.
Ariga et al. (FASER Collaboration) (2018-11-26). "Letter of Intent for FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC".arXiv:1811.10243 [physics.ins-det].
Ariga et al. (FASER Collaboration) (2018-12-21). "Technical Proposal for FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC".arXiv:1812.09139 [physics.ins-det].
External links
Official FASER website
vte
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
List of LHC experiments ALICE ATLAS CMS LHCb LHCf MoEDAL TOTEM FASER
Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP)
List of LEP experiments ALEPH DELPHI OPAL L3
Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS)
List of SPS experiments AWAKE CNGS NA48 NA49 NA58/COMPASS NA60 NA61/SHINE NA62 UA1 UA2 BIBC LEBC HOLEBC
Proton Synchrotron (PS)
PSB LEIR BEBC PS215/CLOUD Gargamelle 2 m Bubble Chamber 30 cm Bubble Chamber 81 cm Saclay Bubble Chamber
Linear accelerators
AWAKE CTF3 CLEAR LINAC 1 LINAC 2 LINAC 3 LINAC 4
Other accelerators
AA (part of AAC) AC (part of AAC) AD ISOLDE
ISOLTRAP WITCH ISR LEAR
PS210 LEIR LPI (LIL and EPA) n-TOF SC SppS
Non-accelerator experiments
CAST
Future projects
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Compact Linear Collider Future Circular Collider
Related articles
LHC@home Safety of high-energy particle collision experiments CERN Courier CERN openlab Worldwide LHC Computing Grid Microcosm exhibition Streets in CERN The Globe of Science and Innovation Particle Fever (2013 documentary)
Hellenica World - Scientific Library
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
