Mass and lifetime limits on new long-lived particles in 300 gev/c pi - interactions

A sensitive search has been done for the production of new long-lived and penetrating particles by 300 GeV/c negative pions. No new state —decaying into at least two charged known particles —has been detected with mass above 1 GeV/c2 and lifetime in the range 5·10−11 s to 5·10−7s. We give upper limits on production cross sections, and consequences on the existence of heavy “axion-like” particles, heavy neutrinos and supersymmetric particles. In particular, this experiment excludes the existence of light gluinos with lifetime in the range 5·10−11 to 10−8s: this closes the last “window of opportunity” for gluinos withM<2 GeV/c2 and lifetime measurable in particle physics experiments.