The X17 boson and the d(p,e+ e-)3He and d(n,e+ e-)3H processes: a theoretical analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential effects of a hypothetical low-mass boson, X17, on electron-positron pair production in specific nuclear reactions, using advanced theoretical models to analyze possible signatures and isospin dependencies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of how X17 boson exchange could influence nuclear reaction cross sections, incorporating chiral effective field theory and exploring various boson types.

Findings

Electromagnetic processes modeled with chiral EFT

Impact of X17 boson exchange on cross sections analyzed

Isospin dependency of X17 interactions examined

Abstract

The present work deals with the e+ e- pair production in the d(p,e+e-)3He and d(n,e+ e-)3H processes, in order to evidentiate possible effects due to the exchange of a hypothetical low-mass boson, the so-called X17. These processes are studied for energies of the incident beams in the range 18-30 MeV, in order to have a sufficient energy to produce such a boson, whose mass is estimated to be around 17 MeV. We first analyze them as a purely electromagnetic processes, in the context of a state-of-the-art approach to nuclear strong-interaction dynamics and nuclear electromagnetic currents, derived from chiral effective field theory chiEFT. Next, we examine how the exchange of a hypothetical low-mass boson would impact the cross sections for such processes. We consider several possibilities, that this boson is either a scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, or axial particle. The main aim of the study is to exploit the specular structure of the 3He and 3H nuclei to investigate the isospin dependency of the X17-nucleon interaction, as the alleged "proto-phobicity".