English

Discovering True Muonium at LHCb

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2019-09-18 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We study the potential of the LHCb experiment to discover, for the first time, the μ+μ\mu^+\mu^- true muonium bound state. We propose a search for the vector 13S11^3S_1 state, T ⁣M\mathcal{T\!M}, which kinetically mixes with the photon and dominantly decays to e+ee^+e^-. We demonstrate that a search for ηγT ⁣M\eta \to \gamma \mathcal{T\!M}, T ⁣Me+e\mathcal{T\!M}\to e^+e^- in a displaced vertex can exceed a significance of 5 standard deviations assuming statistical uncertainties. We present two possible searches: an inclusive search for the e+ee^+e^- vertex, and an exclusive search which requires an additional photon and a reconstruction of the η\eta mass.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.08458,
  title  = {Discovering True Muonium at LHCb},
  author = {Xabier Cid Vidal and Philip Ilten and Jonathan Plews and Brian Shuve and Yotam Soreq},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.08458},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures; v2: edits from comments and review, matched to PRD version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:43:09.095Z