Searching for Dark Matter with the PADME experiment

Abstract

The great success of the Standard Model has reached its maximum with the Higgs boson discovery. However, several anomalies observed in the universe when applying the gravitational theory, lead to believe that the visible matter is not the only constituent of the universe. A new matter component, called dark matter, must be introduced through an extension of the Standard Model. A simple scenario consisting in adding a new gauge symmetry U D (1) and, as a consequence, a new (massive) gauge boson, the dark photon A′. PADME is a new experiment of the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati searching for the A′, decaying invisibly, produced in the fixed target annihilation e+e − → γA′. The technique used by the experiment to probe the dark photon hypothesis is the missing mass method. The PADME experiment took data in two runs. Some preliminary highlights from the ongoing data analysis effort are presented.