Search for excited electrons and muons in sqrt(s)=8 TeV proton-proton collisions with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

The ATLAS detector at the LHC is used to search for excited electrons and excited muons in the channel pp -> ll* -> llgamma, assuming that excited leptons are produced via contact interactions. The analysis is based on 13 fb-1 of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. No evidence for excited leptons is found, and a limit is set at the 95% credibility level on the cross section times branching ratio as a function of the excited-lepton mass m_l*. For m_l* > 0.8 TeV, the respective upper limits on sigma*B(l* -> lgamma) are 0.75 fb and 0.90 fb for the e* and mu* searches. Limits on sigma*B are converted into lower bounds on the compositeness scale Lambda. In the special case where Lambda = m_l*, excited-electron and excited-muon masses below 2.2 TeV are excluded.