Journal of High Energy Physics (Jul 2024)

Dark fluxes from electromagnetic cascades

  • Nikita Blinov,
  • Patrick J. Fox,
  • Kevin J. Kelly,
  • Pedro A. N. Machado,
  • Ryan Plestid

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)022
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2024, no. 7
pp. 1 – 42

Abstract

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Abstract We study dark sector production in electromagnetic (EM) cascades. This problem requires accurate simulations of Standard Model (SM) and dark sector processes, both of which impact angular and energy distributions of emitted particles that ultimately determine flux predictions in a downstream detector. We describe the minimal set of QED processes which must be included to faithfully reproduce a SM cascade, and identify a universal algorithm to generate a dark sector flux given a Monte-Carlo simulation of a SM shower. We provide a new tool, , which simulates EM cascades with associated dark vector production, and compare it against existing literature and “off the shelf” tools. The signal predictions at downstream detectors can strongly depend on the nontrivial interplay (and modelling) of SM and dark sector processes, in particular multiple Coulomb scattering and positron annihilation. We comment on potential impacts of these effects for realistic experimental setups.

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