Is There a Sign of New Physics in Beryllium Transitions?

Abstract

We discuss the current status of the anomaly in beryllium-8 nuclear transitions recently reported in the angular distribution of internal conversion electron-positron pairs. We present a phenomenological analysis of the signal and review the models proposed to explain it, focusing on those involving a new light protophobic vector gauge boson. We also elaborate on the prospects of verifying the anomaly in present and future experiments.

19 pages + references, 10 figures; Invited talk given at the American Physical Society April Meeting 2017, Washington, DC, January 28, 2017; based mainly on arXiv:1604.07411 [hep-ph] and arXiv:1608.03591 [hep-ph]

References in corpus (12)

• New Fixed-Target Experiments to Search for Dark Gauge Forces
• Improved predictions for g-2 of the muon and α_{\rm QED}(M_Z^2)
• Unbroken B-L Symmetry
• Particle Physics Models for the 17 MeV Anomaly in Beryllium Nuclear Decays
• Theory for Baryon Number and Dark Matter at the LHC
• The light U boson as the mediator of a new force, coupled to a combination of Q, B, L and dark matter
• Projections for Dark Photon Searches at Mu3e
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of electromagnetic transitions in 8Be with meson-exchange currents derived from chiral effective field theory
• Protophobic Light Vector Boson as a Mediator to the Dark Sector
• Probing a dark photon using rare leptonic kaon and pion decays
• The new interaction suggested by the anomalous ${}^8$Be transition sets a rigorous constraint on the mass range of dark matter
• Light gauge boson in rare $K$ decay

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Flavor probes of axion-like particles
• Dynamical Evidence For a Fifth Force Explanation of the ATOMKI Nuclear Anomalies
• QED Meson Description of the X17 and Other Anomalous Particles
• Evaporation Barrier for Dark Matter in Celestial Bodies
• The QED four-photon amplitudes off-shell: part 2
• Search for new light vector boson using $J/\Psi$ at BESIII and Belle II
• Dark Matter Raining on DUNE and Other Large Volume Detectors
• On the question of quark confinement in the Abelian U(1) QED gauge interaction
• Dynamics of quarks and gauge fields in the lowest-energy states in QCD and QED
• Probing the ATOMKI X17 vector boson using Dalitz decays $V\to P{e}^{+}{e}^{-}$
• QED meson description of the anomalous particles at ~17 and ~38 MeV