Hitherto unobserved long-lived massive particles with electric and/or colour charge are predicted by a range of theories which extend the Standard Model. In this paper a search is performed at the ATLAS experiment for slow-moving charged particles produced in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy at the LHC, using a data-set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb-1. No deviations from Standard Model expectations are found. This result is interpreted in a framework of supersymmetry models in which coloured sparticles can hadronise into long-lived bound hadronic states, termed R-hadrons, and 95% CL limits are set on the production cross-sections of squarks and gluinos. The influence of R-hadron interactions in matter was studied using a number of different models, and lower mass limits for stable sbottoms and stops are found to be 294 and 309 GeV respectively. The lower mass limit for a stable gluino lies in the range from 562 to 586 GeV depending on the model assumed. Each of these constraints is the most stringent to date.
Distribution of the observed rate of energy loss in the Pixel detector plus the simulated background and model estimates for three gluino masses.
Distribution of the observed BETA values in the Tile Calorimeter plus the simulated background and model estimates for three gluino masses.
Distribution of the heavy particle Mass estimated from the Pixel detector data plus the simulated background and model estimates for three gluino masses. A cut of dE/dx > 1.1 MeV/(gm*cm**2) is imposed.;.
A search for long-lived charged particles reaching the muon spectrometer is performed using a data sample of 37 pb^-1 from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No excess is observed above the estimated background. Stable stau's are excluded at 95% CL up to a mass of 136 GeV, in GMSB models with N5 = 3, messenger = 250 TeV, sign(mu) = 1 and tan beta = 5. Electroweak production of sleptons is excluded up to a mass of 110 GeV. Gluino R-hadrons in a generic interaction model are excluded up to masses of 530 GeV to 544 GeV depending on the fraction of R-hadrons produced as gluino-balls
Distribution of BETA for all candidates in the slepton search. Data are presented for inclusive muon production and for di-muons from Z0 decays together with Monte Carlo predictions of the latter.
Distribution of BETA for all candidates in the R-hadron search. Data are presented for inclusive muon production and for di-muons from Z0 decays together with Monte Carlo predictions of the latter.
Candidate estimated mass distribitions for data, expected background with error and simulated signals for the slepton search.
Forum