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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

SEARCHING FOR LONG-LIVED DARK PHOTONS WITH THE HEAVY PHOTON SEARCH EXPERIMENT

A heavy photon (also called a dark photon or A0 ) is a hypothetical vector boson that arises from a massive U(1) abelian gauge symmetry. Heavy photons kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon, thus they are a natural portal to hidden sectors that are favored in a variety of dark sector scenarios, particularly for dark matter at the sub-GeV mass scale. The Heavy Photon Search Experiment (HPS) is a fixed target experiment at Je↵erson Laboratory dedicated to searching for heavy photons in the MeV - GeV mass range and kinetic mixing strength ✏2 ⇠ 10

Solt, Matthew Reagan↗
DOE OSTI2024

Searching for Strongly-Interacting Dark Matter with the Heavy Photon Search Experiment

The Heavy Photon Search Experiment (HPS) is a fixed-target experiment at Jefferson Lab’s Hall B, designed to explore a hidden sector (HS) of particles containing dark matter and a new force mediator known as the “heavy photon” (A'). The A' is a massive spin-1 gauge boson associated with a new U (1)D symmetry in the HS that kinetically mixes with the Standard Model () photon with a weak coupling strength parameterized by ¿, with ¿2 ~ 10-2 -10-10. HPS utilizes a high-intensity electron beam on a thin tungsten target to produce heavy photons in the MeV-GeV mass range via “dark bremsstrahlung,” a process analogous to SM bremsstrahlung but suppressed by ¿2. The A' can decay resonantly to SM leptons, allowing HPS to conduct both mass resonance searches for prompt decays (large ¿) and displaced vertex searches for long-lived particles (small ¿). In addition to the minimal A' model, HPS probes more complex extensions such as the QCD-like strongly-interacting massive particles (SIMPs) HS containing “dark” pions (pD) and vector mesons (VD), with pD as dark matter candidates. These particles introduce new thermal dark matter freeze- out scenarios and visible signals through long-lived VD decays to SM leptons, which are accessible to HPS. This analysis conducted a displaced vertex search for VD ¿ e-e+ in the mass range 30 MeV to 124 MeV and ¿ between 10-6 < ¿ < 10-2 using data from the 2016 Engineering Run (10.753 nb-1) at 2.3 GeV. Unlike the minimal A' search, SIMP signal kinematics required new approaches to signal normalization and SM background rejection. The strongest signal evidence was a local p-value of 0.01317 for mVD = 119 MeV, corresponding to a global significance of 0.9s. Although no signal was found, this search excluded a region of the SIMP parameter space at 90 % confidence. This work demonstrates HPS’s competitive capability to probe SIMP sectors within cosmologically significant parameters and introduces a new method for HPS displaced vertex searches using track vertical impact parameter cuts

Spellman, Alic [Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, C↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) Software Environment

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) is an experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) designed to search for a hidden sector photon (A’) in fixed-target electro-production. It uses a silicon microstrip tracking and vertexing detector placed inside a dipole magnet to measure charged particle trajectories and a fast lead-tungstate crystal calorimeter located just downstream of the magnet to provide a trigger and to identify electromagnetic showers. The HPS experiment uses both invariant mass and secondary vertex signatures to search for the A’. The experimental collaboration is small and quite heterogeneous: it is composed of members of the nuclear physics as well as particle physics communities, from universities and national labs from around the US and Europe. Enabling such a disparate group to concentrate on the physics aspects of the experiment required that the software be easy to install and use, and having such limited manpower meant that existing solutions had to be exploited. HPS has successfully completed two engineering runs and completed its first physics run in the summer of 2019. We begin with an overview of the physics goals of the experiment followed by a short description of the detector design. We then describe the software tools used to design the detector layout and simulate the expected detector performance. Event reconstruction involving track, cluster and vertex finding and fitting for both simulated and real data was, to first order, adopted from existing software originally developed for Linear Collider studies. Bringing it all together into a cohesive whole involved the use of multiple software solutions with common interfaces.

Graf, Norman↗
DOE OSTI2026

SEARCHING FOR MESONIC DARK MATTER WITH THE HEAVY PHOTON SEARCH EXPERIMENT

Several highly-sensitive astrophysical experiments over the past couple of decades have demonstrated that the current abundance of visible Standard Model matter cannot explain galactic rotation curves, the expansion history of the Universe, or the apparent warping of light in empty space. Instead, one finds strong agreement with this body of experimental results upon positing the existence of an invisible particulate field, dark matter. Namely, a cold, weakly interacting dark matter component can explain all these phenomena. A number of accelerator-based experiments have been developed to search for the weak couplings/interactions of these particles, many of them concentrating on particle models with masses of tens to thousands of GeV. A relatively new, well-motivated model is a dark sector coupled to the Standard Model via a dark photon. The current abundance of dark matter can be obtained if one assumes that dark matter is coupled to light by a MeV to GeV particle with a U(1) symmetry. The parameter space of these models remains largely unexplored because they are difficult to probe experimentally. In this thesis, I analyze data from the Heavy Photon Search (HPS) detector, whose two detector halves closely surround the electron beam, providing acceptance to far-forward boosted interactions. This forward acceptance to highly boosted particles yields unprecedented sensitivity to MeV-scale invariant masses. I exhaustively optimize the offline reconstruction of the HPS detector. Each reconstruction object, from Silicon Vertex Tracker hits to tracks, is studied to maximize acceptance of dark matter events. I then use the 2021 run data to search for one model of dark-photon-mediated matter, the Strongly Interacting Massive Particle (SIMP). SIMP models provide self-interacting dark matter candidates that can form bound states resembling dark mesons. HPS can detect SIMPs through the decay of a dark vector boson (either a dark ¿ or ¿) into e+e- pairs. I obtain exclusion contours for SIMPs using both an optimized cuts-based selection and a machine-learning-based selection, advancing our knowledge of the nature of dark matter.

O'Dwyer, Rory [Stanford Univ., CA (United States).↗
DOE OSTI2021

Searches for a Long-Lived Heavy Photon

This award supported work on the Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment by three members of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics: Robert Johnson (professor), Vitaliy Fadeyev (physicist), and Alic Spellman (graduate student), from September 2018 through March 2020.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

First displaced vertex search for electroproduced dark-sector strongly interacting massive particles by the HPS experiment

The Heavy Photon Search experiment (HPS) is a fixed-target, electron beam experiment designed to search for 𝑒 + ⁢𝑒 − mass resonances and displaced decays using a forward acceptance spectrometer. This paper details the search for naturally long-lived “dark” vector mesons (𝑉 𝐷 ) arising from a dark sector of beyond-Standard-Model strongly interacting massive particles, characterized by a QCD-like 𝑆⁢𝑈⁢(3) 𝐷 symmetry and coupled to the Standard Model photon via a new 𝑈⁢(1) 𝐷 gauge interaction mediated by the “heavy photon,” or 𝐴′. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 10 608 nb −1 collected during the 2016 HPS engineering run. The displaced vertex search for 𝑉 𝐷 → 𝑒 +⁢ 𝑒 − in the 𝑒 +⁢ 𝑒 − invariant mass range 39–179 MeV showed no statistically significant evidence for signal above the QED background.

extensions of gauge sector↗
DOE OSTI2021

Searching for Dark Matter and Dark Sectors

The overall objective of this project was to explore new particle and forces beyond those known in the Standard Model of particle physics. In particular, the research focused on low-mass dark sectors, especially below the mass of the proton (about 1 GeV). Dark sectors, which are particles that are not charged directly under the Standard Model forces, are an exciting theoretical possibility that could address several shortcomings of the Standard Model, including the existence of dark matter. The research accomplished the following: (1) Developed novel techniques and strategies for direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter, and provided the theoretical support for ongoing direct-detection efforts. (2) Investigated new models of dark sectors, and derived new constraints from cosmology, astrophysics, and terrestrial experiments. This includes an investigation of models with dark-matter self-interactions that could help form supermassive black holes in the early Universe. (3) Explored new opportunities for dark-sector searches with existing and planned experiments. This includes providing the theoretical support to two experiments I helped propose, the A' Experiment (APEX) and the Heavy Photon Search (HPS), both at Jefferson Lab. The proposed research program significantly advanced the search for new particles and new forces. The outcomes and impact were: (1) It further enabled direct-detection experiments to probe vast regions of uncharted dark matter parameter space down to MeV masses, about three orders of magnitude lower in mass than traditional direct-detection strategies. (2) It exposed gaps in current experimental exploration, prompting new ideas for how these might be probed, and revealed how dark sectors might impact structure in our Universe. (3) It increased the discovery potential of dark sectors at three experimental frontiers–the energy, intensity, and cosmic frontiers.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Design and performance of silicon strip sensors with slim edges for HPS experiment

In this paper, we report on design and performance of new strip sensors for the Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment. The sensors feature a slim edge implementation using the Scribe–Cleave–Passivate (SCP) method. The slim edge design has allowed the introduction of a new layer closer to the target, which increased the tracking acceptance and vertex precision, improving physics reach of the experiment. We describe the production, testing, and operational experience with the new sensors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2026

Search for pair production of heavy resonances in final states with a photon and large-radius jets in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

A search for the pair production of heavy spin-1/2 or spin-3/2 resonances (𝑡*) in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ =13 TeV is presented. Data collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC from 2016 to 2018 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb −1 are used. The analysis targets benchmark signal scenarios where one 𝑡* decays into a top quark (𝑡) and a photon (𝛾), and the other into a 𝑡 quark and a gluon (𝑔), i.e., 𝑝⁢𝑝 → $𝑡^*\overline{⁢𝑡^*}$ → 𝑡⁢𝑡⁢𝛾⁢𝑔. All-hadronic final states from the 𝑡 pair decay chain are selected using jet substructure techniques. The signal is probed as a function of the 𝑡* candidate mass, which is reconstructed using the photon and a top quark candidate jet. No significant deviation from the background-only hypothesis is found. Observed (expected) upper limits on the signal cross section at 95% confidence level are set, excluding masses of spin-1/2 𝑡* particles below 930 (930) GeV and spin-3/2 𝑡* particles below 1330 (1390) GeV. This analysis marks the first search for heavy resonances in the $𝑡\bar{⁢𝑡}𝛾⁢𝑔$ channel. Exploiting the high-energy photon to reduce the backgrounds, this search achieves sensitivity competitive with 𝑝⁢𝑝 → $𝑡^*\overline{⁢𝑡^*}$ → $𝑡\bar{⁢𝑡}⁢𝑔⁡𝑔$ searches for spin-1/2 𝑡* despite the small expected 𝑡* → 𝑡⁢𝛾 branching fraction.

hadron colliders↗
DOE OSTI2026

Review of Particle Physics

The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,200 new measurements from 903 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. Particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Most of the 118 reviews are updated, including many that are heavily revised.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Review of Particle Physics - Scalar Mesons below 1 GeV

The summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 2,717 new measurements from 869 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. Particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Most of the 120 reviews are updated, including many that are heavily revised. The is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 includes the Summary Tables and 97 review articles. Volume 2 consists of the Particle Listings and contains also 23 reviews that address specific aspects of the data presented in the Listings. The complete (both volumes) is published online on the website of the Particle Data Group () and in a journal. Volume 1 is available in print as the . A with the Summary Tables and essential tables, figures, and equations from selected review articles is available in print, as a web version optimized for use on phones, and as an Android app. The 2024 edition of the Review of Particle Physics should be cited as: S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024)© 20242024

Navas, S. [Universidad de Granada]↗
DOE OSTI2020

Review of Particle Physics

The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,324 new measurements from 878 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. Particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 120 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including a new review on High Energy Soft QCD and Diffraction and one on the Determination of CKM Angles from B Hadrons. The Review is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 includes the Summary Tables and 98 review articles. Volume 2 consists of the Particle Listings and contains also 22 reviews that address specific aspects of the data presented in the Listings. The complete Review (both volumes) is published online on the website of the Particle Data Group (pdg.lbl.gov) and in a journal. Volume 1 is available in print as the PDG Book. A Pariicle Physics Booklet with the Summary Tables and essential tables, figures, and equations from selected review articles is available in print and as a web version optimized for use on phones as well as an Android app.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Review of Particle Physics

Abstract The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 2,143 new measurements from 709 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. Particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 120 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including a new review on Machine Learning, and one on Spectroscopy of Light Meson Resonances. The Review is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 includes the Summary Tables and 97 review articles. Volume 2 consists of the Particle Listings and contains also 23 reviews that address specific aspects of the data presented in the Listings. The complete Review (both volumes) is published online on the website of the Particle Data Group (pdg.lbl.gov) and in a journal. Volume 1 is available in print as the PDG Book. A Particle Physics Booklet with the Summary Tables and essential tables, figures, and equations from selected review articles is available in print, as a web version optimized for use on phones, and as an Android app.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The FACET Project: Forward Aperture CMS ExTension to search for new Long-Lived Particles

FACET is a proposed new subsysem for CMS to search for portals such as dark photons, dark higgs, heavy neutral leptons and axion-like particles in the very forward direction at the High Luminosity LHC. Such particles can penetrate up to 50 m of iron and then decay inside a 14 m$^3$ vacuum pipe made by enlarging an 18 m long section of the LHC pipe to a radius of 50 cm.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Search for a resonance decaying into a scalar particle and a Higgs boson in the final state with two bottom quarks and two photons in proton–proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for the resonant production of a heavy scalar X decaying into a Higgs boson and a new lighter scalar S, through the process X → S(→ $b\overline{b}$)H(→γγ), where the two photons are consistent with the Higgs boson decay, is performed. The search is conducted using an integrated luminosity of 140 fb -1 of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The search is performed over the mass range 170 ≤ m X ≤ 1000 GeV and 15 ≤ m S ≤ 500 GeV. Parameterised neural networks are used to enhance the signal purity and to achieve continuous sensitivity in a domain of the (m X , m S ) plane. No significant excess above the expected background is found and 95% CL upper limits are set on the cross section times branching ratio, ranging from 39 fb to 0.09 fb. The largest deviation from the background-only expectation occurs for (m X , m S ) = (575, 200) GeV with a local (global) significance of 3.5 (2.0) standard deviations.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗