2016/01/14 by John Ellis, Kazuki Sakurai · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Asymmetry #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Large Hadron Collider #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Proton #Sphaleron #Transition rate matrix #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep04(2016)086
16 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2016/01/14 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/01 · arxiv updated 2016/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In a recent paper, Tye and Wong (TW) have argued that sphaleron-induced transitions in high-energy proton-proton collisions should be enhanced compared to previous calculations, based on a construction of a Bloch wave function in the periodic sphaleron potential and the corresponding pass band structure. Here we convolute the calculations of TW with parton distribution functions and simulations of final states to explore the signatures of sphaleron transitions at the LHC and possible future colliders. We calculate the increase of sphaleron transition rates in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 13/14/33/100 TeV for different sphaleron barrier heights, while recognising that the rates have large overall uncertainties. We use a simulation to show that LHC searches for microscopic black holes should have good efficiency for detecting sphaleron-induced final states, and discuss their experimental signatures and observability in Run 2 of the LHC and beyond. We recast the early ATLAS Run-2 search for microscopic black holes to constrain the rate of sphaleron transitions at 13 TeV, deriving a significant limit on the sphaleron transition rate for the nominal sphaleron barrier height of 9 TeV.