The Heavy Photon Search Experiment at Jefferson Lab

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) is a new experiment at Jefferson Lab that will search for heavy U(1) vector bosons (heavy photons or dark photons) in the mass range of 20 MeV/c$^2$ to 1 GeV/c$^2$. Dark photons in this mass range are theoretically favorable and may mediate dark matter interactions. The dark photon couples to electric charge through kinetic mixing with the photon, allowing its production through a process analogous to bremsstrahlung radiation. HPS will utilize this production mechanism to probe dark photons with relative couplings of $ε^2 = α'/α$ ~ $10^{-5}$ to $10^{-10}$ and search for the $e^{+}e^{-}$ or $μ^{+}μ^{-}$ decay of the dark photon via two signatures (invariant mass and displaced vertex). Using Jefferson Lab's high luminosity electron beam along with a compact large acceptance forward spectrometer consisting of a silicon vertex tracker, lead tungstate electromagnetic calorimeter and a muon detector, HPS will access hitherto unexplored regions in the mass/coupling space.

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