Search for dark photon production at BaBar

Bertrand Echenard

doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2015.09.414

Bertrand Echenard

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2015.09.414

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Abstract

We present a search for a dark photon, a new massive vector boson interacting weakly with Standard Model particles, using data collected with the BaBar detector. No statistically significant deviations from the Standard Model predictions are seen, and 90% confidence level upper limits on the mixing strength between the photon and dark photon are set at the level of 10−4–10−3 for dark photon masses in the range 0.02 – 10.2 GeV.

Highlights

We present a search for a dark photon, a new massive vector boson interacting weakly with Standard Model particles, using data collected with the BABAR detector
New particles neutral under the Standard Model (SM) interactions arise in many models of New Physics [1]
The corresponding gauge boson is often referred to as the dark photon (A ) and couples to the SM hypercharge via kinetic mixing [2] with a mixing strength, resulting in an effective interaction between the dark photon and SM fermions. This idea has recently received much attention in the context of dark matter models, where weakly interacting massive particles annihilate into dark photons, which subsequently decay into SM fermions [3, 4, 5]

Summary

Introduction

We present a search for a dark photon, a new massive vector boson interacting weakly with Standard Model particles, using data collected with the BABAR detector. This idea has recently received much attention in the context of dark matter models, where weakly interacting massive particles annihilate into dark photons, which subsequently decay into SM fermions [3, 4, 5]. The dark photon mass is constrained to be in the MeV to GeV range 1 .

Results

Conclusion