Speaker
Description
Probing the energy frontier with increasingly large particle colliders has culminated at the beginning of the current decade with the discovery of the Higgs boson, the final particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Nevertheless, the energy frontier program has so far failed to find any particles of the dark sector comprising the 95% of the Universe’s energy density not described by the Standard Model. One way to continue making progress with collider experiments is to explore regions of phase space that have so far been inaccessible. Embarking on this endeavor, the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER) is a new experiment at the LHC that aims to detect long-lived particles that may be produced in the far-forward region, remaining undetectable by current LHC experiments. Such dark sector particle candidates include dark photons, dark Higgs bosons, axion-like particles, heavy neutral leptons, and other light and weakly interacting candidates that would be able to travel through hundreds of meters of concrete and rock before decaying into Standard Model particles. FASER is now an approved experiment with installation set for LHC Long Shutdown 2 and data taking to begin in 2021 at the start of LHC Run 3. Discussed will be the current status of FASER along with its timeline, challenges, and prospects for shedding new light on dark matter.
