Production of Dark Photons through Higher Electromagnetic Moments at LDMX: Simulations and Model Discrimination

TL;DR

This paper explores how LDMX can detect dark photons produced via higher electromagnetic moments, analyzing their unique kinematic signatures to differentiate models and extend sensitivity to new physics scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces the consideration of higher electromagnetic moments in dark photon production at LDMX, providing analytic and numerical cross sections and discussing model discrimination strategies.

Findings

LDMX Phase-II can probe these higher electromagnetic moment models.

Kinematic distributions vary with model, aiding in discrimination.

Energy and transverse momentum help partially break degeneracies.

Abstract

We extend the projected sensitivity of LDMX for sub-GeV dark matter (DM) to the case of dark photons produced through higher order electromagnetic moments. These moments arise from loop diagrams involving portal matter fields, along with the gauge fields of new symmetry groups. Due to the Lorentz structures, in particular the momentum dependence, of these additional interactions, the kinematic distributions expected at missing momentum/energy experiments vary with model in addition to dark photon mass. By considering four additional types of interactions -- magnetic and electric dipole, charge radius, and anapole moment -- we show that LDMX Phase-II is expected to probe the relic target of these additional dark photon models. We compare the analytic with the numerical methods for calculating the dark bremsstrahlung cross section, and compute the kinematic distributions for each model. The potential for model discrimination in the scenario of non-zero signal events at LDMX is discussed. We find that there is a degeneracy between the dark photon mass and model, which can be partially broken by considering both the energy and the transverse momentum of the recoil electron.