• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Observation of proton-tagged, central (semi)exclusive production of high-mass lepton pairs in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer
  • Contributor: Sirunyan, A. M.; Tumasyan, A.; Adam, W.; Ambrogi, F.; Asilar, E.; Bergauer, T.; Brandstetter, J.; Brondolin, E.; Dragicevic, M.; Erö, J.; Escalante Del Valle, A.; Flechl, M.; Friedl, M.; Frühwirth, R.; Ghete, V. M.; Grossmann, J.; Hrubec, J.; Jeitler, M.; König, A.; Krammer, N.; Krätschmer, I.; Liko, D.; Madlener, T.; Mikulec, I.; [...]
  • Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2018
  • Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics, 2018 (2018) 7
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1007/jhep07(2018)153
  • ISSN: 1029-8479
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Abstract The process pp → pℓ + ℓ −p(*), with ℓ + ℓ − a muon or an electron pair produced at midrapidity with mass larger than 110 GeV, has been observed for the first time at the LHC in pp collisions at $$ \sqrt{s}=13 $$ s = 13 TeV. One of the two scattered protons is measured in the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer (CT-PPS), which operated for the first time in 2016. The second proton either remains intact or is excited and then dissociates into a low-mass state p*, which is undetected. The measurement is based on an integrated luminosity of 9.4 fb−1 collected during standard, high-luminosity LHC operation. A total of 12 μ + μ − and 8 e+e− pairs with m(ℓ + ℓ −) > 110 GeV, and matching forward proton kinematics, are observed, with expected backgrounds of 1.49 ± 0.07 (stat) ± 0.53 (syst) and 2.36 ± 0.09 (stat) ± 0.47 (syst), respectively. This corresponds to an excess of more than five standard deviations over the expected background. The present result constitutes the first observation of proton-tagged γγ collisions at the electroweak scale. This measurement also demonstrates that CT-PPS performs according to the design specifications.
  • Access State: Open Access