Search for Hidden Particles at the High-Intensity ECN3 Facility

SHiP and the associated SPS Beam Dump Facility is a new general-purpose experiment in preparation at the SPS to search for “hidden” particles as predicted by a large number of models of Hidden Sectors that are capable of explaining for instance dark matter, neutrino oscillations, and the origin of the baryon asymmetry in the Universe. 

The experiment is design to search for any type of feebly interacting long-lived particles, among which are found e.g. heavy neutral leptons, dark photons , dark scalars, axion-like particles, and light supersymmetric particles – sgoldstinos, etc, as well as different types of Light Dark Matter.

The high intensity of the SPS and in particular the large production of charm mesons and photons with the 400 GeV proton beam allow a comprehensive search at the MeV-GeV scale over many orders of magnitude in coupling. 

The detector incorporates two complementary apparatuses aimed at searching for hidden particles through both visible decays and through scattering signatures from recoil of electrons or nuclei. Moreover, the facility is ideally suited to study the interactions of tau neutrinos.