Searching for Muonphilic Dark Sectors with Proton Beams

Abstract

Proton beam-dump experiments are a high-intensity source of secondary muons and provide an opportunity to probe muon-specific dark sectors. We adopt a simplified-models framework for an exotic light scalar particle coupling predominantly or exclusively to muons. Equipped with state-of-the-art muon simulations, we compute the sensitivity reach in the parameter space $(m_S,g_{\mu })$ of the dark mediator, examining in detail the examples of the experiment NA62 in beam-dump mode and the proposed experiment SHiP. We find a significant yield of such exotics in the sub-GeV mass range. Our projections are competitive with those of primary muon-beam experiments and complementary to current constraints, spanning uncharted parameter space and accessing new physics potentially responsible for the $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ anomaly.

15 pages, 8 figures, corrected typos, added references

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Supernova Limits on Muonic Dark Forces
• New Searches for Muonphilic Particles at Proton Beam Dump Spectrometers
• The LHC as a TeV Muon Beam Dump: Muonphilic Scalars at FASER
• Prospects of five-dimensional $L_{\mu }-L_{\tau }$ gauge interactions in the light of elastic neutrino-electron scatterings: The scope of the DUNE near detector
• Monophotons from Scalar Portal Dark Matter at Neutrino Experiments