Axion beams at HERA?

If the recently observed anomaly in the PVLAS experiment is due to the axion, then the powerful beams of synchrotron photons, propagating through high magnetic field of the HERA beamline, become strong axion sources. This gives a unique opportunity of detection of the axion-photon interactions by installing a small detector in the HERA tunnel, and to corroborate the axion hypothesis within a few days of running.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Measurement of the Longitudinal Polarization of the HERA Electron Beam Using Crystals and the ZEUS Luminosity Monitor

A measurement of the longitudinal polarization of the electron beam at HERA utilizing coherent interactions of high energy photons in crystals is proposed. Modification of existing facilities would allow an independent polarization measurement and a verification of birefringence phenomena in crystals for 20--30~GeV photons. Relevant experimental issues and systematic uncertainties are also presented.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil

Observation of the beam-size effect at HERA

A precise measurement of the spectrum of the photons from $ep$ bremsstrahlung with the ZEUS luminosity monitor at HERA is reported. The measurement shows a reduced rate compared to the Bethe-Heitler spectrum for photon energies below 5~GeV. This suppression, called the beam-size effect, is explained by the finite transverse size of the beam overlap relative to the typical impact parameter in the process of $ep$ bremsstrahlung at HERA energies.Comment: 12 pages, late

Tagging Two-Photon Production at the LHC

Tagging two-photon production offers a significant extension of the LHC physics programme. Effective luminosity of high-energy gamma-gamma collisions reaches 1% of the proton-proton luminosity and the standard detector techniques used for measuring very forward proton scattering should allow for a reliable extraction of interesting two-photon interactions. Particularly exciting is a possibility of detecting two-photon exclusive Higgs boson production at the LHC.Comment: 9 pages and 4 figure

Hector, a fast simulator for the transport of particles in beamlines

Computing the trajectories of particles in generic beamlines is an important ingredient of experimental particle physics, in particular regarding near-beam detectors. A new tool, Hector, has been built for such calculations, using the transfer matrix approach and energy corrections. The limiting aperture effects are also taken into account. As an illustration, the tool was used to simulate the LHC beamlines, in particular around the high luminosity interaction points (IPs), and validated with results of the Mad-X simulator. The LHC beam profiles, trajectories and beta functions are presented. Assuming certain forward proton detector scenarios around the IP5, acceptance plots, irradiation doses and chromaticity grids are produced. Furthermore, the reconstruction of proton kinematic variables at the IP (energy and angle) is studied as well as the impact of the misalignment of beamline elements.Comment: 40 pages, 20 figures; added references, corrected typos ; submitted to JINS

High energy photon interactions at the LHC

Experimental prospects for studying high-energy photon-photon and photon-proton interactions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are discussed. Cross sections are calculated for many electroweak and beyond the Standard Model processes. Selection strategies based on photon interaction tagging techniques are studied. Assuming a typical LHC multipurpose detector, various signals and their irreducible backgrounds are presented after applying acceptance cuts. Prospects are discussed for the Higgs boson search, detection of supersymmetric particles and of anomalous quartic gauge couplings, as well as for the top quark physics.Comment: 17 pages, 16 tables and 14 figure

Sensitivity to anomalous quartic gauge couplings in photon-photon interactions at the LHC

The exclusive two-photon production at the LHC of pairs of W and Z bosons provides a novel and unique test-ground for the electroweak gauge boson sector. In particular it offers, thanks to high gamma-gamma center-of-mass energies, large and direct sensitivity to the anomalous quartic gauge couplings otherwise very difficult to investigate at the LHC. An initial analysis has been performed assuming leptonic decays and generic acceptance cuts. Simulation of a simple counting experiment has shown for the integrated luminosity of 10 fb-1 at least four thousand times larger sensitivity to the genuine quartic couplings, a_0^W, a_0^Z, a_C^W and a_C^Z, than those obtained at LEP. The impact of the unitarity constraints on the estimated limits has been studied using the dipole form-factors. Finally, differential distributions of the decay leptons have been provided to illustrate the potential for further improvements of the sensitivities.Comment: 8 pages and 11 figures, Contribution to the CERN workshop on "High energy photon collisions at the LHC", 22-25 April 200