Detection of collinear high energetic di-photon signatures with Micromegas Detectors

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Micromegas-based pre-shower detector capable of distinguishing nearly collinear high-energy photon pairs from single photons with high efficiency and background rejection, aiding searches for weakly interacting light particles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, cost-effective Micromegas detector design that effectively separates collinear photon signatures at high energies, improving background discrimination in particle searches.

Findings

Achieves 20-80% efficiency for photon separation at 0.1mm to 2mm distances.

Provides over 90% background rejection rate.

Offers a compact, cost-effective detector solution.

Abstract

The search for weakly interacting, light particles that couple to photons received significant attention in recent years. When those particles are produced at high energies, they lead to two, nearly collinear photons after their decay and hence can be detected by an electromagnetic calorimeter system. The typical dominant background in searches for those high energetic weakly particles are single, high energetic photons, which leave similar signatures in a standard calorimeter system. One promising approach to separate signal from background events is to employ a dedicated pre-shower detector in front of the calorimeter that can distinguish one- and two-photon signatures. In this work we present a conceptual design of such detector which is able to separate one from two collinear photon signatures with efficiencies between 20% to 80% for two photons separated by 0.1mm to 2mm, respectively, with energies above 300 GeV and a background rejection of more than 90%. Our pre-shower detector design has an active surface area of 10cm x 10cm, a depth of 230mm and is based on Micromegas detectors, thus offering a cost effective solution.