SBN-BD: $\mathcal{O}$(10 GeV) Proton Beam Dump at Fermilab's PIP-II Linac

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new proton beam dump at Fermilab's PIP-II linac, aiming to significantly enhance dark matter search sensitivity through meson production and decay detection, leveraging upgraded beam power and existing detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a dedicated beam dump station at Fermilab's PIP-II linac to improve dark matter detection capabilities beyond current experiments.

Findings

Potential for over tenfold increase in dark matter search sensitivity.

Feasibility of using existing SBN detectors with the new beam dump.

Cost-effective upgrade leveraging upcoming PIP-II linac capabilities.

Abstract

Proton beam dumps are prolific sources of mesons enabling a powerful technique to search for vector mediator coupling of dark matter to neutral pion and higher mass meson decays. By the end of the decade the PIP-II linac will be delivering up to 1 MW of proton power to the FNAL campus. This includes a significant increase of power to the Booster Neutrino Beamline (BNB) which delivers 8 GeV protons to the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) detectors. By building a new dedicated beam dump target station, and using the SBN detectors, a greater than an order of magnitude increase in search sensitivity for dark matter relative to the recent MiniBooNE beam dump search can be achieved. This modest cost upgrade to the BNB would begin testing models of the highly motivated relic density limit predictions and provide novel ways to test explanations of the anomalous excess of low energy events seen by MiniBooNE.