Emerging photon jets in the hadronic calorimeter: A novel signature of neutral long-lived particles at the LHC

We propose a novel collider signature for neutral long-lived particles (LLPs): the emerging photon jet in the hadronic calorimeter (HCAL). This signature arises when a neutral LLP decays into photons within the HCAL, producing an electromagnetic shower without associated charged tracks or energy deposits in the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL). To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we consider the fermiophobic Higgs boson $h_f$ in the Type-I two-Higgs-doublet model as a representative scenario. In the ultralight regime ($m_{h_f}<1$ GeV), $h_f$ decays exclusively into a photon pair via loop-induced processes, resulting in a suppressed width and consequently a long lifetime. Focusing on the golden channel $pp\to H^{\pm }{h}_f\to W^{\pm }{h}_f{h}_f$, we analyze the exotic final state in which one $h_f$ decays in the ECAL and appears as a highly collimated photon jet (reconstructed as a single photon), while the other decays within the HCAL, producing an emerging photon jet. Through a detailed signal-to-background analysis incorporating realistic detector effects via fast simulation, we demonstrate that this signature achieves discovery-level sensitivity at the HL-LHC across a broad region of parameter space consistent with theoretical and experimental constraints. While our study focuses on the fermiophobic Higgs, the emerging photon jet in the HCAL constitutes a broadly applicable and previously unexplored strategy for detecting neutral LLPs decaying into photons, opening a new avenue in LLP searches at colliders.