Abstract
The proposed DarkQuest beam dump experiment, a modest upgrade to the existing SeaQuest/SpinQuest experiment, has great potential for uncovering new physics within a dark sector. We explore both the near-term and long-term prospects for observing two distinct, highly-motivated hidden sector benchmark models: heavy neutral leptons and Higgs-mixed scalars. We comprehensively examine the particle production and detector acceptance at DarkQuest, including an updated treatment of meson production, and light scalar production through both bremsstrahlung and gluon-gluon fusion. In both benchmark models, DarkQuest will provide an opportunity to probe previously inaccessible interesting regions of parameter space on a fairly short timescale when compared to other proposed experiments.
Highlights
To come; for a recent summary of existing and planned efforts, see the community studies [1,2,3,4]
We will study the potential sensitivity of DarkQuest to two highly motivated dark sector particles — dark scalars and heavy neutral leptons (HNLs)
The target is situated ∼ 1 m upstream of a 5 m long, closed-aperture, solid iron dipole focusing magnet (“FMAG”), which magnetically deflects soft SM radiation and functions as a beam dump for the large majority of protons that do not interact in the target
Summary
The E906/E1039 SeaQuest/SpinQuest experiment is a proton fixed target beam dump spectrometer experiment on the neutrino-muon beam line of the Fermilab Accelerator Complex [8]. The target is situated ∼ 1 m upstream of a 5 m long, closed-aperture, solid iron dipole focusing magnet (“FMAG”), which magnetically deflects soft SM radiation and functions as a beam dump for the large majority of protons that do not interact in the target This effectively allows only high energy muons, neutral kaons, and neutrinos to traverse the FMAG. There are plans to install a refurbished electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) from the PHENIX experiment [27] between St-3 and the absorber wall (see brown region in figure 1) This will allow the upgraded experiment, DarkQuest, to search for a much broader set of dark sector displaced signatures, including electrons, charged pions and kaons, and photons.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
