Search for light dark sectors using electron-photon collisions
11 affiliations
- 1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte
- 2University of Oslo
- 3Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik
- 4University of Liverpool
- 5Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (UNI)
- 6Universidade de São Paulo
- 7Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
- 8Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
- 9Instituto de Física “Gleb Wataghin”, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
- 10Millennium Institute for Subatomic Physics at the High-Energy Frontier (SAPHIR) of ANID
- 11Universidad de La Serena
Abstract
The dark photon is a new gauge boson that naturally arises in many beyond-the-Standard-Model scenarios and couples to the electromagnetic current through kinetic mixing. Owing to this feature, it is often considered a portal between the dark and visible sectors and has therefore become the target of numerous experimental searches worldwide. In this work, we propose a search for dark photons based on inverse Compton scattering, γe− → A′e−, to be conducted at electron accelerators. In this setup, photons from a laser source impinge on an accelerated electron beam, producing a dark photon in the final state. We investigate two complementary search strategies based on the resulting missing-energy signature: a single-photon-veto approach and a measurement of the recoil-electron energy spectrum, with angular information considered as an extension of the latter. We derive the projected sensitivity assuming an incident photon energy of about 1 eV and an electron beam energy of 3 GeV. We show that this experimental setup could cover an unexplored region of parameter space and constitute a promising probe of dark sectors in the future.
Related
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BibTeX
@article{angel2026search,
title = {{Search for light dark sectors using electron-photon collisions}},
author = {L. Angel and G. Casse and G. Gambini and A. S. de Jesus and V. Kozhuharov and A. A. Machado and F. S. Queiroz and E. Segreto and J. D. Shergold and J. Smirnov},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1007/jhep11(2026)055},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP11(2026)055},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Search for light dark sectors using electron-photon collisions
AU - L. Angel
AU - G. Casse
AU - G. Gambini
AU - A. S. de Jesus
AU - V. Kozhuharov
AU - A. A. Machado
AU - F. S. Queiroz
AU - E. Segreto
AU - J. D. Shergold
AU - J. Smirnov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
JO - Journal of High Energy Physics
DO - 10.1007/jhep11(2026)055
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP11(2026)055
AB - The dark photon is a new gauge boson that naturally arises in many beyond-the-Standard-Model scenarios and couples to the electromagnetic current through kinetic mixing. Owing to this feature, it is often considered a portal between the dark and visible sectors and has therefore become the target of numerous experimental searches worldwide. In this work, we propose a search for dark photons based on inverse Compton scattering, γe− → A′e−, to be conducted at electron accelerators. In this setup, photons from a laser source impinge on an accelerated electron beam, producing a dark photon in the final state. We investigate two complementary search strategies based on the resulting missing-energy signature: a single-photon-veto approach and a measurement of the recoil-electron energy spectrum, with angular information considered as an extension of the latter. We derive the projected sensitivity assuming an incident photon energy of about 1 eV and an electron beam energy of 3 GeV. We show that this experimental setup could cover an unexplored region of parameter space and constitute a promising probe of dark sectors in the future.
SN - 1029-8479
ER -