NPC Neutrino Seminar

Probing the Dark Sector using a Beam Dump Facility at Fermilab in the PIP-II Era

by Jacob Zettlemoyer (Fermilab)

US/Central
West Wing (WH10NW) and Zoom

West Wing (WH10NW) and Zoom

Description

The accelerator complex at Fermilab is currently undergoing improvements which will increase the available beam power to the complex and is known as Proton Improvement Plan-II (PIP-II). The PIP-II Linac is slated for operation near the end of this decade and will be the main proton driver for Fermilab experiments moving forward and provide the beam to LBNF/DUNE. However, the DUNE physics program requires only a fraction of the available protons provided by PIP-II and there are ideas to explore using the excess protons. The Accelerator Complex Evolution, or ACE, will provide further upgrades in the 2030s in the form of increased power to LBNF along with a replacement for the Fermilab Booster which could also include an accumulator ring. The beam dump scenario provides an exciting opportunity to search for dark sector physics across detector threshold energy scales with examples being accelerator-produced dark matter, active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations, millicharged particles, and axion-like particles, which can be produced in the proton collisions with a fixed target. In this talk, I will summarize the physics possible at a PIP-II beam dump facility and sensitivities to different dark sector physics and other beyond the Standard Model searches based upon the previous workshop and discuss the next steps towards realizing a beam dump program at PIP-II.