Dark Photon Studies atBABAR

Alessandra Filippi,A Denig,C.-F Redmer

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201921806001

Abstract

An overview of the most recent results byBABARon the search of dark photon and dark sector gauge bosons is presented, with larger emphasis on dark photon decays in invisible channels and searches for muonic dark force.

Highlights

After more than 80 years since its first postulation by Zwicky, the existence of Dark Matter (DM) can be considered as consolidated, on account of numerous astrophysical pieces of evidence, all based on the gravitational interaction
One alternative idea is that beyond Standard Model (SM) Dark Sectors exist, which can host a variety of new particles, that interact with ordinary matter in a feeble way only through gauge mediators via their kinetic couplings
The U(1)DARK gauge mediator gets a mass in the MeV-GeV scale due to electroweak symmetry breaking, and it could be observable; on the other hand, the kinetic mixing is typically expected to be in the range 10−5−10−2, but could even be smaller, which accounts for the weakness of the dark boson interaction with ordinary matter

Summary

Introduction

After more than 80 years since its first postulation by Zwicky, the existence of Dark Matter (DM) can be considered as consolidated, on account of numerous astrophysical pieces of evidence, all based on the gravitational interaction. One appealing possibility is that it could be formed by heavy massive particles which can interact only weakly with ordinary matter (the so-called WIMPs) This paradigm suffers for the absence of any observation, so far, in direct detection and high energy colliders experiments. One alternative idea is that beyond Standard Model (SM) Dark Sectors exist, which can host a variety of new particles, that interact with ordinary matter in a feeble way only through gauge mediators via their kinetic couplings. On the other hand, some lighter and stable enough DM states exist (χ), one would expect the dark photon to decay to invisible channels These decays would be dominating as not ǫY suppressed. Were the χ states unstable, one would expect more complicated signatures in which many leptons could appear, as a consequence of off-shell patterns including Higgs and heavy leptons and quarks loops

Search for Dark Photon visible decays at BABAR

Search for Dark Photon invisible decays at BABAR

Search for Muonic Dark forces

Conclusions