Potential for the discovery of the protophobic boson at the STCF

TL;DR

This study evaluates the potential of the upcoming STCF detector to discover the 17 MeV protophobic boson, using simulations to analyze its sensitivity and discovery reach amidst background events.

Contribution

First feasibility analysis of displaced light-boson searches at the STCF, demonstrating its capability to detect the protophobic boson in relevant parameter regions.

Findings

STCF can discover the protophobic boson with manageable background levels.

Detector simulations show promising sensitivity around the 17 MeV mass.

Likelihood analysis indicates potential for 5σ discovery in specific scenarios.

Abstract

We study the morphology of the main drift chamber (MDC) proposed to be built around the collision point at the upcoming Super tau-charm facility (STCF), to check for its suitability in discovering the 17 MeV protophobic boson (X17 boson), hypothesised as a solution to the persistent ATOMKI nuclear-transition anomalies. These anomalies, observed in the excited $^8$Be, $^4$He, $^{12}$C, $^{16}$O nuclear transitions, have been interpreted as evidence for a $\sim$17 MeV, protophobic vector boson. Using the TrackEff framework, we perform detector-level simulations of the STCF MDC, and evaluate displaced-vertex sensitivities towards the protophobic boson, across the relevant mass-coupling parameter space. We study benchmark scenarios with visible and dark decay channels to perform likelihood-based significance estimates in order to determine the 5$\sigma$ discovery reach for the protophobic boson. We find that STCF can discover the protophobic boson while tolerating $\sim 10^4$ background events for specific regions of the parameter space around the 17 MeV peak. Our analysis establishes the first feasibility study of displaced light-boson searches at the STCF, motivating a full Geant-4 simulation.