Production of supersymmetric particles in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

Heavy ions with energies of some TeV per nucleon can be considered as carriers of intense photon fields. In peripheral collisions elementary particles with masses up to a few 100 GeV can be produced via two-photon processes. The authors evaluate total cross sections for the formation of charged supersymmetric particles, namely sleptons and winos, in Pb+Pb collisions. At LHC energy Eion=3.5 TeV/u and for rest masses of around m=50 GeV they obtain sigma (w+w-) sigma ((W+, w-)) approximately=10 nb and sigma (l+, l-) approximately=1 nb. Basic features of an impact parameter-dependent treatment of the production mechanism are discussed.