Serendipity in dark photon searches

Abstract

Searches for dark photons provide serendipitous discovery potential for other types of vector particles. We develop a framework for recasting dark photon searches to obtain constraints on more general theories, which includes a data-driven method for determining hadronic decay rates. We demonstrate our approach by deriving constraints on a vector that couples to the B-L current, a leptophobic B boson that couples directly to baryon number and to leptons via B-γ kinetic mixing, and on a vector that mediates a protophobic force. Our approach can easily be generalized to any massive gauge boson with vector couplings to the Standard Model fermions, and software to perform any such recasting is provided at https://gitlab.com/philten/darkcast.

Hunting all the hidden photons

“…Looking into the future we consider projections for planned and proposed experiments for the case of the universal hidden photon, the U(1) Lµ−Le , U(1) Le−Lτ , and U(1) Lµ−Lτ gauge bosons as well as the U(1) B−L gauge boson, respectively. In spirit our paper is similar to the recent recasting framework provided in [10], where in particular also U(1) B−L is considered. However, we consider in addition the theoretically as well as phenomenologically particularly interesting case of the three lepton family groups.…”

“…In the absence of kinetic mixing, constraints on light U(1) B−L gauge bosons have been discussed in [6][7][8][9][10]. The groups U(1) Lµ−Le , U(1) Le−Lτ are considered in [11] and limits on U(1) Lµ−Lτ gauge bosons have been derived in [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] (the last two papers take into account kinetic mixing).…”

Coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering as a probe of aZ′through kinetic and mass mixing effects

“…1 We adopt the analysis of Refs. [45][46][47] to place limits on our models, and since they assume a coupling of the form ϵeA 0 μ J μ EM , the limits on the dark Z and dark hypercharge require the following scalings, respectively:…”

“…1(b) is for the L μ − L τ model. 1 We thank the authors of [45] for pointing this out and providing us with their data. existing bounds [47] on Uð1Þ B−L models.…”

Bounding quantum dark forces

“…The Z 0 is assumed to be leptophobic; hence, the theory has gauge anomalies, which should be canceled by new chiral fermions which cannot be arbitrarily heavy. Recent development on meson decays via Z 0 [77,78] seem also to put challenging bounds on Λ (see [77]), in which case the fifth force bounds would need to be improved by several order of magnitudes to be competitive on this minimal Z 0 scenario. However, this scenario can be embedded in the framework of next section, in which case experimental constraints from mesons, colliders are relaxed.…”