Searching for muonic forces with the ATLAS detector

Understand

The LHC copiously produces muons via different processes, and the muon sample will be large at the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

• In this work we propose to leverage this large muon sample and utilize the HL-LHC as a muon fixed-target experiment, with the ATLAS calorimeter as the target.
• We consider a novel analysis for the ATLAS detector, which takes advantage of the two independent muon momentum measurements by the inner detector and the muon system.
• We show that a comparison of the two measurements, before and after the calorimeters, can probe new force carriers that are coupled to muons and escape detection.