Search for Weakly-interacting Long-lived Particles in Proton-Proton Collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

Abstract

A search for the decay of a light Higgs boson to a pair of weakly-interacting, long-lived particles in 1.94/fb of proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded in 2011 by the ATLAS detector is presented. The strategy requires that one of the long-lived particles decay inside the muon spectrometer. The second long-lived particle is required to decay after the pixel detector in the inner detector and before the middle plane of the muon spectrometer. No excess of events is observed above the expected background and limits on the Higgs boson production and branching ratio to weakly-interacting, long-lived particles are derived as a function of the particle proper decay length.