Concept of Very-Asymmetric Lepton Collider for Dark Matter Search

TL;DR

This paper proposes a very-asymmetric lepton collider with high luminosity and extended mass reach, using a high-energy positron beam and a low-energy electron beam to enhance dark matter searches via dark photon detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel collider scheme with asymmetric energies to significantly improve luminosity and mass reach for dark matter detection compared to conventional colliders.

Findings

Achieves higher luminosity than symmetric colliders.

Extends accessible mass range for dark photon searches.

Demonstrates configuration of 10 MeV electron and 4 GeV positron beams.

Abstract

Accelerator-based searches for dark matter are aiming for high sensitivity and need an experimental setup with high luminosity. This field of research is often called intensity frontier physics. One of the best motivated portals of interaction between dark matter and ordinary matter is a dark photon which could be observed as a resonance in the invariant mass of the decay products. Electron-positron collisions are known to be the cleanest interaction for such a study. In this paper we propose a scheme for a collider which allows for a luminosity of a few orders of magnitude higher than could be obtained in a conventional symmetric collider and with a few times higher accessible mass than is possible using a positron beam and a fixed target approach. The key concept is based on asymmetric energies: a high-energy circulating positron beam and a low-energy high-intensity electron beam, and optimization of the beam interaction region. We present here a configuration of a collision region of 10 MeV electron and 4 GeV positron beams.