Displaced Vertices: A Search for Long-Lived Particles at CMS
We report the results of a search for long-lived particles produced in pairs in proton-proton collisions at the LHC operating at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV. The data were collected by the CMS detector during the full Run 2 data taking period from 2015 through 2018, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 140/fb. This search targets pair-produced long-lived particles with a mean proper decay length between 0.1 and 100 mm that each decay into at least two quarks. The signature is a pair of displaced vertices each formed from many tracks. This search extends a previous CMS search using the 2015 and 2016 dataset, with improvements in background rejection, background estimation techniques, as well as uncertainty estimation. Results are compared with R-parity violating supersymmetry models that predict pair-produced long-lived particles, each decaying into multijet or dijet final states. No events are observed with two reconstructed high-track-multiplicity vertices. For models of long-lived pair-produced neutralinos, gluinos, and top squarks, pair-production cross sections larger than 0.08 fb at 95% confidence level are excluded for masses between 800 and 3000 GeV and mean proper decay lengths between 1 and 25 mm. In the gluino model, masses up to 2500 GeV are excluded for mean proper decay lengths between 0.6 and 90 mm. In the neutralino model, masses up to 1100 GeV are excluded for mean proper decay lengths between 0.6 and 70 mm. For the top squark model, masses up to 1600 GeV are excluded for mean proper decay lengths between 0.4 and 80 mm.