Search for a dark photon in e(+)e(-) collisions at BABAR

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 113; no. 20; p. 201801
• Main Authors: Lees, J P, Poireau, V, Tisserand, V, Grauges, E, Palano, A, Eigen, G, Stugu, B, Brown, D N, Feng, M, Kerth, L T, Kolomensky, Yu G, Lee, M J, Lynch, G, Koch, H, Schroeder, T, Hearty, C, Mattison, T S, McKenna, J A, So, R Y, Khan, A, Blinov, V E, Buzykaev, A R, Druzhinin, V P, Golubev, V B, Kravchenko, E A, Onuchin, A P, Serednyakov, S I, Skovpen, Yu I, Solodov, E P, Todyshev, K Yu, Lankford, A J, Mandelkern, M, Dey, B, Gary, J W, Long, O, Campagnari, C, Franco Sevilla, M, Hong, T M, Kovalskyi, D, Richman, J D, West, C A, Eisner, A M, Lockman, W S, Panduro Vazquez, W, Schumm, B A, Seiden, A, Chao, D S, Cheng, C H, Echenard, B, Flood, K T, Hitlin, D G, Miyashita, T S, Ongmongkolkul, P, Porter, F C, Andreassen, R, Huard, Z, Meadows, B T, Pushpawela, B G, Sokoloff, M D, Sun, L, Bloom, P C, Ford, W T, Gaz, A, Smith, J G, Wagner, S R, Ayad, R, Toki, W H, Spaan, B, Bernard, D, Verderi, M, Playfer, S, Bettoni, D, Bozzi, C, Calabrese, R, Cibinetto, G, Fioravanti, E, Garzia, I, Luppi, E, Piemontese, L, Santoro, V, Calcaterra, A, de Sangro, R, Finocchiaro, G, Martellotti, S, Patteri, P, Peruzzi, I M, Piccolo, M, Rama, M, Zallo, A, Contri, R, Lo Vetere, M, Monge, M R, Passaggio, S, Patrignani, C, Robutti, E, Bhuyan, B, Prasad, V, Adametz, A, Uwer, U, Lacker, H M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Physical Society 14-11-2014; American Physical Society (APS)
• Subjects: Charging; Collisions; Confidence intervals; Dark matter; Deviation; Experiment-HEP,HEPEX; Experiments; Física de partícules; High Energy Physics - Experiment; Mathematical models; Particle physics; Photons; Physics; Searching
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.201801

Dark sectors charged under a new Abelian interaction have recently received much attention in the context of dark matter models. These models introduce a light new mediator, the so-called dark photon (A^{'}), connecting the dark sector to the standard model. We present a search for a dark photon in the reaction e^{+}e^{-}→γA^{'}, A^{'}→e^{+}e^{-}, μ^{+}μ^{-} using 514  fb^{-1} of data collected with the BABAR detector. We observe no statistically significant deviations from the standard model predictions, and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the mixing strength between the photon and dark photon at the level of 10^{-4}-10^{-3} for dark photon masses in the range 0.02-10.2  GeV. We further constrain the range of the parameter space favored by interpretations of the discrepancy between the calculated and measured anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.