Journal of High Energy Physics (Sep 2018)

M3: a new muon missing momentum experiment to probe (g − 2) μ and dark matter at Fermilab

  • Yonatan Kahn,
  • Gordan Krnjaic,
  • Nhan Tran,
  • Andrew Whitbeck

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2018)153
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2018, no. 9
pp. 1 – 32

Abstract

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Abstract New light, weakly-coupled particles are commonly invoked to address the persistent ∼ 4σ anomaly in (g−2) μ and serve as mediators between dark and visible matter. If such particles couple predominantly to heavier generations and decay invisibly, much of their best-motivated parameter space is inaccessible with existing experimental techniques. In this paper, we present a new fixed-target, missing-momentum search strategy to probe invisibly decaying particles that couple preferentially to muons. In our setup, a relativistic muon beam impinges on a thick active target. The signal consists of events in which a muon loses a large fraction of its incident momentum inside the target without initiating any detectable electromagnetic or hadronic activity in downstream veto systems. We propose a two-phase experiment, M3 (Muon Missing Momentum), based at Fermilab. Phase 1 with ∼ 1010 muons on target can test the remaining parameter space for which light invisibly-decaying particles can resolve the (g − 2) μ anomaly, while Phase 2 with ∼ 1013 muons on target can test much of the predictive parameter space over which sub-GeV dark matter achieves freeze-out via muon-philic forces, including gauged U(1) Lμ−Lτ .

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