Searching for Long-Lived Dark Scalars with MAPP-1 and MAPP-2 at the HL-LHC
Abstract
Feebly interacting particles (FIPs) arise generically in dark-sector extensions of the Standard Model (SM). Among the simplest and most theoretically motivated such candidates is a dark scalar that mixes with the SM Higgs boson, acting as a mediator between the dark sector and the SM. For sufficiently small mixing, such a dark scalar manifests at collider experiments as a long-lived particle with a macroscopic decay length---a signature to which conventional general-purpose detectors have limited sensitivity. The MoEDAL-MAPP experiment is a dedicated search facility at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) targeting long-lived FIPs as avatars of physics beyond the SM. We present 95% confidence-level background-free sensitivity projections for the MAPP-1 and MAPP-2 detectors at the High-Luminosity LHC to Higgs-portal dark scalars produced via rare B-meson decays and exotic Higgs boson decays. Our results establish the proposed MAPP-2 detector as a complementary probe of feebly-coupled dark scalars, with sensitivity to lifetimes beyond the reach of existing collider searches.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{arifeen2026searching,
title = {{Searching for Long-Lived Dark Scalars with MAPP-1 and MAPP-2 at the HL-LHC}},
author = {Shafakat Arifeen and James Pinfold and Pierre-Philippe A. Ouimet and Michael Staelens},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.03893},
eprint = {2611.03893},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03893},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Searching for Long-Lived Dark Scalars with MAPP-1 and MAPP-2 at the HL-LHC
AU - Shafakat Arifeen
AU - James Pinfold
AU - Pierre-Philippe A. Ouimet
AU - Michael Staelens
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.03893
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03893
AB - Feebly interacting particles (FIPs) arise generically in dark-sector extensions of the Standard Model (SM). Among the simplest and most theoretically motivated such candidates is a dark scalar that mixes with the SM Higgs boson, acting as a mediator between the dark sector and the SM. For sufficiently small mixing, such a dark scalar manifests at collider experiments as a long-lived particle with a macroscopic decay length---a signature to which conventional general-purpose detectors have limited sensitivity. The MoEDAL-MAPP experiment is a dedicated search facility at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) targeting long-lived FIPs as avatars of physics beyond the SM. We present 95% confidence-level background-free sensitivity projections for the MAPP-1 and MAPP-2 detectors at the High-Luminosity LHC to Higgs-portal dark scalars produced via rare B-meson decays and exotic Higgs boson decays. Our results establish the proposed MAPP-2 detector as a complementary probe of feebly-coupled dark scalars, with sensitivity to lifetimes beyond the reach of existing collider searches.
ER -