Discovering neutrino tridents at the Large Hadron Collider

Neutrino trident production of dilepton pairs is well recognized as a sensitive probe of both electroweak physics and physics beyond the Standard Model. Although a rare process, it could be significantly boosted by such new physics, and it also allows the electroweak theory to be tested in a new regime. We demonstrate that the forward neutrino physics program at the Large Hadron Collider offers a promising opportunity to measure for the first time, dimuon neutrino tridents with a statistical significance exceeding <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mn>5</a:mn><a:mi>σ</a:mi></a:math>, improving on the previous claims at the <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:mo>∼</c:mo><c:mn>3</c:mn><c:mi>σ</c:mi></c:math> level by the CHARM-II and CCFR collaborations while accounting for additional backgrounds later identified by the NuTeV collaboration. We present predictions for various proposed experiments and outline a specific experimental strategy to identify the signal and mitigate backgrounds, based on “reverse tracking” dimuon pairs in the <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><e:mrow><e:mi>FASER</e:mi><e:mi>ν</e:mi><e:mn>2</e:mn></e:mrow></e:math> detector. We also discuss prospects for constraining beyond Standard Model contributions to neutrino trident rates at high energies. Published by the American Physical Society 2024