Abstract
The discovery of the Higgs boson has fully confirmed the Standard Model of particles and fields. Nevertheless, there are still fundamental phenomena, like the existence of dark matter and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, deserving an explanation that could come from the discovery of new particles. Searches for new physics with accelerators are performed at the LHC, looking for high massive particles coupled to matter with ordinary strength. A new experiment at CERN meant to search for very weakly coupled particles in the few GeV mass domain has been recently proposed. The existence of such particles, foreseen in different theoretical models beyond the Standard Model, is largely unexplored. A beam dump facility using high intensity 400 GeV protons is a copious source of such unknown particles in the GeV mass range. The beam dump is also a copious source of neutrinos and in particular it is an ideal source of tau neutrinos, the less known particle in the Standard Model. The neutrino detector can also search for dark matter through its scattering off the electrons. We report the physics potential of the SHiP experiment.
Highlights
IntroductionThere are several phenomena deserving an explanation that the Standard Model is unable to provide: the existence of dark matter and its nature, the baryonic asymmetry of the Universe and neutrino masses
The discovery of the Higgs boson is certainly a big triumph of the Standard Model
It is clear that new physics is there and presumably several new particles have still to be discovered
Summary
There are several phenomena deserving an explanation that the Standard Model is unable to provide: the existence of dark matter and its nature, the baryonic asymmetry of the Universe and neutrino masses. Searches for new physics with accelerators are being carried out at the LHC, especially suited to look for high mass particles with ordinary couplings to matter. Complementary searches for very weakly coupled and long lived particles require a beam dump facility. Such a facility is made of a high density proton target, followed by a hadron stopper and a muon shield. Apart from residual muons, the only remaining particles are electron, muon and tau neutrinos on top of hidden, long lived particles produced either in proton interactions or in secondary particle decays. We will review here the physics potential of this experiment for a selection of physics channels
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call