Collider searches for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model

Despite decades of attempts to reveal its flaws, the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) has withstood all experimental tests and its predictions are in excellent agreement with data. Since the theory was formulated, experiments have provided little guidance regarding the explanations of phenomena not described by the SM, such as the baryon asymmetry of the universe and dark matter. Nor do we have satisfying understanding of the aesthetic and theoretical problems of the model, despite years of searching for new processes and particles proposed to solve them. Such particles can evade being discovered by the comprehensive search programs at collider experiments if the analysis selections and the algorithms used to reconstruct the detector data are not matched to the characteristics of the particles, e.g. if they have long enough lifetimes. As interest in searches for such long-lived particles at colliders grows rapidly, we present a review of this area of research in this article. The broad range of theoretical motivations for particles with long lifetimes and the experimental strategies and methods employed to search for them are described. Results from decades of searches are reviewed, as are opportunities for the next generation of searches both at existing and proposed future experiments.