Abstract
FASER, or the Forward Search Experiment, is a new experiment at CERN
designed to complement the LHC's ongoing physics programme, extending its
discovery potential to light and weakly-interacting particles that may be
produced copiously at the LHC in the far-forward region. New physics
particles targeted by FASER, such as long-lived dark photons or dark
scalars, are characterised by a signature with two oppositely-charged tracks
or two photons with very high energy (TeV) that emanate from a common
vertex inside the detector. A tracking-based technology, supplemented by a
magnet and an electromagnetic calorimeter to allow for energy measurements
are the key components of FASER. The main detector is also complemented by
the FASERn emulsion detector dedicated to the study of neutrinos produced
in LHC collisions via hadron decays.
The full detector was successfully installed in TI12 in March 2021 and
operations have started with the beginning of the Run 3. FASER is now
taking data and has collected more than 25/fb on tape. The detector is fully
functional and physics data analyses are in progress. An overview of the
experiment, its physics goals and its current status will be given in this
seminar.