Stringent limits on the \pi^0 -> \gamma X, X -> e+e- decay from neutrino experiments and constraints on new light gauge bosons

TL;DR

This paper establishes extremely stringent experimental limits on the decay of neutral pions into a photon and a hypothetical light boson, using neutrino experiment data to constrain new physics models involving light gauge bosons.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental bounds on b1^0    X decay with limits as low as 10^{-15}, surpassing previous bounds and constraining models of new light gauge bosons.

Findings

Br(b1^0    X) < 10^{-15}

Constraints on models with light gauge bosons and hidden sectors

Limits surpass previous experimental and cosmological bounds

Abstract

We report new experimental limits on the \pi^0 -> \gamma X decay of the neutral pion into a photon and a light boson X followed by the decay X -> e+e-. If this process exist, one would expect a flux of high energy X's produced from \pi^0's generated by the proton beam in a neutrino target. The X's would then penetrate the downstream shielding and be observed in a neutrino detector via their decays. Using bounds from the NOMAD and PS191 neutrino experiments at CERN that searched for an excess of e+e- pairs from heavy neutrino decays, stringent limits on the branching ratio as small as Br(\pi^0 -> \gamma X) < 10^{-15} are obtained. These limits are several orders of magnitude smaller than the previous experimental and cosmological bounds. The obtained results are used to constrain models, where the X interacts with quarks and leptons, or it is a new vector boson mixing with photons, that transmits interaction between our world and hidden sectors consisting of SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y singlet fields.