Intensity Frontier Experiments Research Articles

Dark matter-electron scattering and freeze-in scenarios in the light of Z′ mediation

We investigate dark matter (DM-)electron scattering in a minimal U(1)X extension of the Standard Model (SM), where the DM can appear as a Majorana fermion, a complex singlet scalar, or a Dirac fermion. To study bounds on the U(1)X gauge coupling (gX) and new gauge boson mass (MZ′), from DM-electron scattering, we consider several direct search experiments like CDMS, DAMIC, SENSEI, PandaX-II, DarkSide-50, and XENON1T-S2 for different U(1)X charges. In this setup, we consider DM production via freeze-in in both radiation-dominated and modified cosmological background to project sensitivities onto gX−MZ′ plane satisfying observed relic abundance. DM-electron scattering could provide comparable, or even stronger, bounds compared to those obtained from the electron/muon (g−2), low-energy scattering, and intensity frontier experiments within 0.01 GeV≲MZ′≲0.1 GeV. Constrains from freeze-in could provide stronger sensitivities for MZ′≳O(1) GeV; however, these limits are comparable to those obtained from LHCb and LEP experiments for O(10) GeV≲MZ′≲150 GeV. In the future, electron-muon scattering (MUonE), proton (FASER and DUNE), and electron/positron (ILC) beam-dump experiments could probe these parameters. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Freeze-in production of sterile neutrino dark matter in a gauged U(1)′ model with inverse seesaw

We consider a general, anomaly free U(1)′ extension of the Standard Model (SM) where the neutrino mass is generated at the tree level via the inverse seesaw mechanism. The model contains three right handed neutrinos, three additional singlet fermions, one extra complex scalar and a neutral gauge boson (Z′). Instead of resorting to a specific U(1) extension, we consider a class of models by taking the U(1)′ charges of the scalars to be free parameters. Here, we assign one pair of the pseudo-Dirac degenerate sterile neutrinos as Dark Matter (DM) candidates which are produced by the freeze-in mechanism. Considering different mass regimes of the DM, Z′ and reheating temperature, we obtain constraints on the U(1)′ charges giving the correct relic abundance. We have also obtained constraints on Z′ mass and coupling from consideration of relic density as well as high energy collider experiments like ATLAS in case of heavy Z′ or in intensity and lifetime frontier experiments like DUNE, FASERs, and ILC beam dump which are looking for light Z′. Additionally, in this model, the decay of pseudo-Dirac DM into active neutrinos can explain the 511 keV line observed by the INTEGRAL satellite.

Probing some photon portals to new physics at intensity frontier experiments

Probing some photon portals to new physics at intensity frontier experiments

An 8 GeV linac as the Booster replacement in the Fermilab Power Upgrade

Increasing the Main Injector beam power above ∼ 1.2 MW requires replacement of the 8 GeV Booster by a higher intensity alternative. In this paper, we consider an 8 GeV linac Booster replacement that produces 8 GeV H- beam for injection into the Recycler Ring or Main Injector. This upgrade will maximize the beam available for neutrino production for the long baseline DUNE experiment to greater than 2.5 MW and enable a next generation of intensity frontier experiments. The 8 GeV linac takes ∼ 1 GeV beam from the PIP-II Linac and accelerates it to ∼ 2 GeV in a 650 MHz superconducting RF linac, followed by a ∼ 2 to 8 GeV pulsed linac using 1300 MHz cryomodules. The linac components incorporate recent improvements in superconducting RF technology. The linac configuration and beam dynamics requirements are presented. Injection options are discussed, including use of an 8 GeV Accumulator Ring. Foil-based injection is the present standard but R&D toward implementing laser-assisted injection could enable a significant improvement. Research needed to implement the Booster replacement is described.

Forecasting dark showers at Belle II

Dark showers from strongly interacting dark sectors that confine at the GeV scale can give rise to novel signatures at e+e− colliders. In this work, we study the sensitivity of B factory experiments to dark showers produced through an effective interaction arising from a heavy off-shell mediator. We show that a prospective search for displaced vertices from GeV-scale long-lived particles at Belle II can improve the sensitivity to dark showers substantially compared to an existing search at BaBar. We compare the sensitivity of searches for displaced signals to searches for promptly produced resonances at BaBar and KLOE and calculate sensitivity projections for a single-photon search at Belle II to invisible dark showers produced through an effective interaction. The underlying structure of the effective interaction can be resolved at higher-energy experiments, where the mediator can be produced on-shell. To study the resulting constraints, we update electroweak precision bounds on kinetically mixed Z′ bosons and reinterpret a search for low-mass di-muon resonances at LHCb in terms of dark showers. We find that LHCb and Belle II are most sensitive to different particle decay lengths, underscoring the complementarity of LHC and intensity frontier experiments.

Production of Chern–Simons bosons in decays of mesons

We consider the effective interaction of quarks with a new GeV-scale vector particle that couples to electroweak gauge bosons by the so-called effective Chern–Simons (CS) interaction. We call this particle the CS boson. We construct effective Lagrangian of the CS boson interaction with quarks of two different flavors. This interaction is given by a divergent loop diagram, however, it turns out that the divergent part is equal to zero as a consequence of the CKM matrix unitarity in the SM. Therefore, we are able to predict effective interaction of the CS boson with quarks of different flavors without introducing new unknown parameters to the model, using only parameters of the initial effective Lagrangian. Our result shows that the effective interaction of the CS boson with down-type quarks is sufficiently stronger compared with up-type quarks. Based on our results, we give a prediction for the production of CS bosons in mesons decays. Branching fractions were obtained for the main reactions of the CS production in meson decays. The results obtained will be useful for searching for the long-lived GeV-scale CS boson in intensity frontier experiments.

High-energy colliders as a probe of neutrino properties

The mediators of neutrino mass generation can provide a probe of neutrino properties at the next round of high-energy hadron (FCC-hh) and lepton colliders (FCC-ee/ILC/CEPC/CLIC). We show how the decays of the Higgs triplet scalars mediating the simplest seesaw mechanism can shed light on the neutrino mass scale and mass-ordering, as well as the atmospheric octant. Four-lepton signatures at the high-energy frontier may provide the discovery-site for charged lepton flavor non-conservation in nature, rather than low-energy intensity frontier experiments.

Production of GeV-scale heavy neutral leptons in three-body decays. Comparison with the PYTHIA approach

Despite the undeniable success of the standard model of particle physics (SM), there are some phenomena that the SM cannot explain. These phenomena indicate that the SM has to be modified. One of the possible ways to extend the SM is to introduce heavy neutral leptons (HNLs). To search for HNLs in intensity Frontier experiments, one has to consider HNL production both in two-body and three-body decays of some mesons. We verified the possibility of using the parton level PYTHIA default matrix elements (without the form-factor formalism) to calculate HNL production in three-body semileptonic decays of B and D mesons in the experimentally interesting mass range of the produced HNLs. We conclude that this approach is quite suitable for the estimation of the sensitivity region for HNLs in the intensity Frontier experiments, provided one uses suitable parton level PYTHIA default matrix elements. Our study was driven by the usage of such an approximation by the SHiP collaboration. We conclude that in this case the parton level PYTHIA default matrix elements could have been chosen more appropriately.

Improved big bang nucleosynthesis constraints on heavy neutral leptons

We constrain the lifetime of thermally produced heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) from big bang nucleosynthesis. We show that even a small fraction of mesons present in the primeval plasma leads to the overproduction of primordial helium-4. This constrains the lifetime of HNLs to be ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{N}<0.02\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{s}$ for masses above the mass of the pion (as compared to 0.1 s reported previously). In combination with accelerator searches, this allows us to put a new lower bound on the HNL masses and define the ``bottom line'' for HNL searches at the future Intensity Frontier experiments.

Discovering the physics of (g−2)μ at future muon colliders

The longstanding muon g-2 anomaly may indicate the existence of new particles that couple to muons, which could either be light (< GeV) and weakly coupled, or heavy (>> 100 GeV) with large couplings. If light new states are responsible, upcoming intensity frontier experiments will discover further evidence of new physics. However, if heavy particles are responsible, many candidates are beyond the reach of existing colliders. We show that, if the g-2 anomaly is confirmed and no explanation is found at low-energy experiments, a high-energy muon collider program is guaranteed to make fundamental discoveries about our universe. New physics scenarios that account for the anomaly can be classified as either "Singlet" or "Electroweak" (EW) models, involving only EW singlets or new EW-charged states respectively. We argue that a TeV-scale future muon collider will discover all possible singlet model solutions to the anomaly. If this does not yield a discovery, the next step would be a O(10 TeV) muon collider. Such a machine would either discover new particles associated with high-scale EW model solutions to the anomaly, or empirically prove that nature is fine-tuned, both of which would have profound consequences for fundamental physics.

Higgs portal from the atmosphere to Hyper-K

A light Higgs portal scalar could be abundantly produced in the earth's atmosphere and decay in large-volume neutrino detectors. We point out that the Hyper-Kamiokande detector bears a strong discovery potential of probing such particles in an uncharted section of parameter space that is actively explored by intensity frontier experiments including rare kaon decays. The signal we propose to look for is electron-positron pair creation that manifests as a double-ring appearing from the same vertex. Most of pairs originate from zenith angles above the Hyper-K detector's horizon. This search can be generalized to other new light states and is highly complementary to beam experiments.

FTS3: Data Movement Service in containers deployed in OKD

The File Transfer Service (FTS3) is a data movement service developed at CERN which is used to distribute the majority of the Large Hadron Collider’s data across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) infrastructure. At Fermilab, we have deployed FTS3 instances for Intensity Frontier experiments (e.g. DUNE) to transfer data in America and Europe, using a container-based strategy. In this article we summarize our experience building docker images based on work from the SLATE project (slateci.io) and deployed in OKD, the community distribution of Red Hat OpenShift. Additionally, we discuss our method of certificate management and maintenance utilizing Kubernetes CronJobs. Finally, we also report on the configuration currently running at Fermilab.

Next frontiers in particle physics detectors: INSTR2020 summary and a look into the future

The physics goals of high luminosity particle accelerators, from LHC to HL-LHC and to the next generation of lepton colliders, have set quite stringent constraints on the future needs at the Instrumentation Frontier. Many technologies are reaching their sensitivity limit and new approaches need to be developed to overcome the currently irreducible technological challenges. The detrimental effect of the material budget and power consumption represents a very serious concern for a high-precision silicon vertex and tracking detectors. One of the most promising areas is CMOS sensors offering low mass and potentially radiation-hard technology for the future proton-proton and electron-positron colliders, intensity frontier and heavy-ion experiments. MPGDs have become a well-established technique in the fertile field of gaseous detectors; these will remain the primary choice whenever the large-area coverage with low material budget is required. Vacuum tube technology is inherently fast and new developments include advances in microchannel plates for photomultipliers with a potential for a picosecond-time resolution in large systems. Several novel concepts of picosecond-timing detectors will have numerous powerful applications in particle identification, pile-up rejection and event reconstruction, and serve numerous scientific goals. The story of modern calorimetry is a textbook example of physics research driving the development of an experimental method. Silicon photomultipliers have seen a rapid progress in the last decade, becoming the standard solution for scintillator-based devices. The integration of advanced electronics and data transmission functionalities plays an increasingly important role and needs to be addressed. Bringing the modern algorithmic advances from the field of machine learning from offline applications to online operations and trigger systems is another major challenge. The timescales spanned by future projects in particle physics, ranging from few years to many decades, constitute a challenge in itself, in addition to the complexity and diversity of the required accelerator and detector R&D. This paper summarizes advances and recent trends in the instrumentation techniques for particle physics experiments, largely based on the presentations given at the International Conference “Instrumentation for Colliding Beam Physics” (INSTR-20), held at BINP Novosibirsk, Russia, from 24 to 28 February, 2020.

Flavour anomalies from a split dark sector

We investigate solutions to the flavour anomalies in B decays based on loop diagrams of a “split” dark sector characterised by the simultaneous presence of heavy particles at the TeV scale and light particles around and below the B-meson mass scale. We show that viable parameter space exists for solutions based on penguin diagrams with a vector mediator, while minimal constructions relying on box diagrams are in strong tension with the constraints from the LHC, LEP, and the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. In particular, we highlight a regime where the mediator lies close to the B-meson mass, naturally realising a resonance structure and a q2-dependent effective coupling. We perform a full fit to the relevant flavour observables and analyse the constraints from intensity frontier experiments. Besides new measurements of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, we find that decays of the B meson, Bs-mixing, missing energy searches at Belle-II, and LHC searches for top/bottom partners can robustly test these scenarios in the near future.

Light scalar production from Higgs bosons and FASER 2

The most general renormalizable interaction between the Higgs sector and a new gauge-singlet scalar S is governed by two interaction terms: cubic and quartic. The quartic term is only loosely constrained by invisible Higgs decays and given current experimental limits about 10% of all Higgs bosons at the LHC can be converted to new scalars with masses up to mHiggs/2. By including this production channel, one significantly extends the reach of the LHC-based Intensity Frontier experiments. We analyze the sensitivity of the FASER experiment to this model and discuss modest changes in the FASER 2 design that would allow exploring an order-of-magnitude wider part of the Higgs portal’s parameter space.

Sensitivity of the intensity frontier experiments for neutrino and scalar portals: analytic estimates

In recent years, a number of intensity frontier experiments have been proposed to search for feebly interacting particles with masses in the GeV range. We discuss how the characteristic shape of the experimental sensitivity regions — upper and lower boundaries of the probed region, the maximal mass reach — depends on the parameters of the experiments. We use the SHiP and the MATHUSLA experiments as examples. We find a good agreement of our estimates with the results of the Monte Carlo simulations. This simple approach allows to cross-check and debug Monte Carlo results, to scan quickly over the parameter space of feebly interacting particle models, and to explore how sensitivity depends on the geometry of experiments.

Hadronic decays of a light Higgs-like scalar

We revisit the question of hadronic decays of a GeV-mass Higgs-like scalar. A number of extensions of the Standard Model predict Higgs sector with additional light scalars. Currently operating and planned Intensity Frontier experiments will probe for the existence of such particles, while theoretical computations are plagued by uncer- tainties. The goal of this paper is to bring the results in a consolidated form that can be readily used by experimental groups. To this end we provide a physically motivated fitting ansatz for the decay width that reproduces the previous non-perturbative nu- merical analysis. We describe systematic uncertainties of the non-perturbative method and provide explicit examples of the influence of extra resonances above 1.4 GeV onto the total decay width.

Spack-Based Packaging and Development for HEP

The art event-based analysis framework is used by multiple Intensity Frontier and other experiments and projects in High Energy Physics (HEP). A system of tools and scripts based around a Fermilab-originated package management system called UNIX Product Support (UPS) has evolved to provide development, packaging, release management, and distribution of the art suite, related experimental software and external dependencies in relocatable binary form. The existing system has limitations in environments such as macOS with System Integrity Protection (SIP) enabled and the various High Performance Computing (HPC) systems that the field of HEP is increasingly looking to leverage. This has led to a search for other ways of providing experiments with a packaging and build system that meets their needs. We describe our efforts to develop a packaging and release management system based on the Spack HPC package management tool to replace the existing UPS-based system. We additionally describe a companion system: SpackDev and cetmodules, allowing simultaneous development of multiple HEP software packages in a consistent environment. A successful implementation of the intended system would have applicability across HEP rather than merely to the users of the art framework.

Design of the protoDUNE raw data management infrastructure

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will employ a set of Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPC) with a total mass of 40 kt as the main components of its Far Detector. In order to validate this technology and characterize the detector performance at full scale, an ambitious experimental program (called “protoDUNE”) has been initiated which includes a test of the large-scale prototypes for the single-phase and dual-phase LArTPC technologies, which will run in a beam at CERN. The total raw data volume that is slated to be collected during the scheduled 3-month beam run is estimated to be in excess of 2.5 PB for each detector. This data volume will require that the protoDUNE experiment carefully design the DAQ, data handling and data quality monitoring systems to be capable of dealing with challenges inherent with peta-scale data management while simultaneously fulfilling the requirements of disseminating the data to a worldwide collaboration and DUNE associated computing sites. We present our approach to solving these problems by leveraging the design, expertise and components created for the LHC and Intensity Frontier experiments into a unified architecture that is capable of meeting the needs of protoDUNE.

Neutrino trident production at the intensity frontier

We have calculated cross sections for the production of lepton pairs by a neutrino incident on a nucleus using both the equivalent photon approximation, and deep inelastic formalism. We find that production of mixed flavour lepton pairs can have production cross sections as high as 35 times those of the traditional muon pair-production process. Rates are estimated for the SHiP and DUNE intensity frontier experiments. We find that multiple trident production modes, some of which have never been observed, represent observable signals over the lifetime of the detectors. Our estimates indicate that the SHiP collaboration should be able to observe on the order of 300 trident events given $2\cdot 10^{20}$ POT, and that the DUNE collaboration can expect approximately 250 trident events in their near detector given 3X10^{22} POT. We also discuss possible applications of the neutrino trident data to be collected at SHiP and DUNE for SM and BSM physics.