Detecting a μτ-philic Z' boson via photon initiated processes at the LHC

Discrepancy between the measured value and the Standard Model prediction of the muon anomalous magnetic moment is a possible hint for new physics. A Z' particle with mu tau flavor violating couplings can give a large contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment due to the tau mass enhancement at the one-loop level, and is known to explain the above discrepancy. In this paper, we study the potential of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for detecting such a Z' boson via the pp -> mu(-)mu(-)tau(+)tau(+) process. Earlier studies in the literature only considered the production channel with quark initial states (pp -> q (q) over bar -> mu(-)mu(-)tau(+)tau(+)). Here, we show that the photon initiated process, pp -> gamma gamma -> mu(-)mu(-)tau(+)tau(+), is in fact the dominant production mode, for a heavy Z' boson of mass greater than a few hundred GeV. The potential of the high luminosity (HL) LHC is also considered.