On ANITA's sensitivity to long-lived, charged massive particles

Understand

We propose that the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) can serve as a detector for long-lived, charged particles, through its measurement of extensive air showers from secondary leptons.

• To test this on an example model, we simulate the production of staus inside the earth from interactions between ultra-high energy neutrinos and nuclei.
• We propose that results of ANITA searches for upgoing air showers can be interpreted in terms of constraints on long-lived, charged massive particles (CHAMPs) and consider a supersymmetric partner of the tau lepton, the stau, as an example of such a particle.
• Exploring the parameter space in stau mass and lifetimes, we find that the stau properties that lead to an observable signal in ANITA are highly energy dependent.