18–24 Jun 2017
UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
US/Pacific timezone

Search for invisible decay of a dark photon produced in e+e- collisions at BABAR

21 Jun 2017, 15:30
30m
Conference Center (UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA)

Conference Center

UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

Working Group Sessions Flavor and Precision Physics Working Group Working Group: Flavor and Precision Physics

Speaker

Dr Fergus Wilson (STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

Description

We report on a search for single-photon events in 53 fb−1 of e+e− collision data collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II B-factory. We look for events with a single high-energy photon and a large missing momentum and energy, consistent with production of a spin-1 particle A’ through the process e+e- -> gamma A’, A’ -> invisible. Such particles, referred to as “dark photons”, are motivated by theories applying a U(1) gauge symmetry to dark matter. We find no evidence for such processes and set 90% confidence level upper limits on the coupling strength of A’ to e+e- for a dark photon with a mass lower than 8 GeV. In particular, our limits exclude the values of the A’ coupling suggested by the dark-photon interpretation of the muon (g-2) anomaly, as well as a broad range of parameters.

Primary author

Dr Fergus Wilson (STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

Presentation materials