Search for dark photons from neutral meson decays in $p$$+$$p$ and $d$$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$=200 GeV

Abstract

The standard model (SM) of particle physics is spectacularly successful, yet the measured value of the muon anomalous magnetic moment $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ deviates from SM calculations by 3.6$\sigma$. Several theoretical models attribute this to the existence of a "dark photon," an additional U(1) gauge boson, which is weakly coupled to ordinary photons. The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has searched for a dark photon, $U$, in ${\pi }^0,\eta \to \gamma e^{+}{e}^{-}$ decays and obtained upper limits of $\mathcal{O}(2\times 10^{-6})$ on $U$-$\gamma$ mixing at 90% CL for the mass range $30<m_U<90$ MeV/$c^2$. Combined with other experimental limits, the remaining region in the $U$-$\gamma$ mixing parameter space that can explain the $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ deviation from its SM value is nearly completely excluded at the 90% confidence level, with only a small region of $29<m_U<32$ MeV/$c^2$ remaining.

arXiv comment580 authors, 9 pages, 5 figures. v2 includes recent BABAR results w/changed title and formatted for Phys. Rev. C. v3 is version accepted for PRC Rapid Communications. Published version will be at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/phenix/WWW/info/pp1/165 Plain text data tables will be at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.html

References in corpus (2)

• Search for light massive gauge bosons as an explanation of the $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ anomaly at MAMI
• Muon g-2, Rare Kaon Decays, and Parity Violation from Dark Bosons

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Search for $A^{\prime }\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decays
• Search for dark photons produced in 13 TeV $pp$ collisions
• A search for pair production of new light bosons decaying into muons in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV
• The Heavy Photon Search experiment at Jefferson Laboratory
• Constraining dark photon model with dark matter from CMB spectral distortions
• Searches for Light Scalars, Pseudoscalars, and Gauge Bosons
• Parity Violation by a Dark Gauge Boson