New physics searches with heavy-ion collisions at the LHC

Drewes, Marco [UCL] Giammanco, Andrea [UCL] Hajer, Jan [UCL] Heisig, Jan [UCL] Krintiras, Georgios [UCL] Lucente, Michele [UCL] et al.

This document summarizes proposed searches for new physics accessible in the heavy-ion mode at the LHC, both through hadronic and ultraperipheral γγ interactions, and that have a competitive or, even, unique discovery potential compared to standard proton-proton collision studies. Illustrative examples include searches of new particles — such as axion-like pseudoscalars, radions, magnetic monopoles, new long-lived particles, dark photons, and sexaquarks as dark matter candidates — as well as new interactions, such as non-linear or non-commutative QED extensions. We argue that such interesting possibilities constitute a well-justified scientific motivation, complementing standard quark-gluon-plasma physics studies, to continue running with ions at the LHC after the Run-4, i.e. beyond 2030, including light and intermediate-mass species, accumulating nucleon-nucleon integrated luminosities in the accessible fb−1 range per month.