Anomalous electromagnetic moments of tau lepton in gamma gamma -> tau(+)tau(-) treaction in Pb plus Pb collisions at the LHC

We discuss the sensitivity of the gamma gamma -> tau(+)tau(-) process in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions on the anomalous magnetic (a(tau)) and electric (d(tau)) moments of tau lepton at LHC energies. We derive the corresponding cross sections by folding the elementary cross section with the heavy-ion photon fluxes and considering semi-leptonic decays of both tau leptons in the fiducial volume of ATLAS and CMS detectors. We present predictions for total and differential cross sections, and for the ratios to gamma gamma -> e(+)e(-) (mu(+)mu(-)) process. These ratios allow to cancel theoretical and experimental uncertainties when performing precision measurements at the LHC. The expected limits on a(tau) with existing Pb+Pb dataset are found to be better by a factor of two comparing to current best experimental limits and can be further improved by another factor of two at High Luminosity LHC. (c) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).