Dark Photon Search at A Circular $e^+e^-$ Collider

Abstract

One of the interesting portals linking a dark sector and the standard model (SM) is the kinetic mixing between the SM $U(1)_Y$ field with a new dark photon $A'$ from a $U(1)_{A'}$ gauge interaction. Stringent limits have been obtained for the kinetic mixing parameter $ε$ through various processes. In this work, we study the possibility of searching for a dark photon interaction at a circular $e^+e^-$ collider through the process $e^+ e^-\to γA^{\prime *} \to γμ^+μ^-$. We find that the constraint on $ε^2$ for dark photon mass in the few tens of GeV range, assuming that the $μ^+μ^-$ invariant mass can be measured to an accuracy of $0.5\%m_{A'}$, can be better than $3\times 10^{-6}$ for the proposed CEPC with a ten-year running at 3$σ$ (statistic) level, and better than $2\times 10^{-6}$ for FCC-ee with even just one-year running at $\sqrt{s} = 240$ GeV, better than the LHC and other facilities can do in a similar dark photon mass range. For FCC-ee, running at $\sqrt{s}=160$ GeV, the constraint can be even better.

RevTex, 9 pages with five figures. Minor modifications added