SEARCHING FOR NEW PHYSICS AT THE LOW-ENERGY FRONTIER

by Achim Denig (Institute for Nuclear Physics Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz)

Monday 15 Oct 2012, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

We report in this seminar on searches for so-called dark photons, which are hypothetical extra-U(1) gauge bosons with weak coupling to Standard Model (SM) matter. Dark photons have been found to give an explanation to a surprisingly large number of 'puzzles', ranging from $(g-2)_\mu$ to the dark matter puzzle. We discuss results on dark photon searches from the Mainz Microtron MAMI as well as on future searches with the electron accelerator MESA, which is a high-intensity electron accelerator with a maximum beam energy of 200 MeV. The low-Q$^2$ measurement of the electroweak mixing angle sin$^2 \Theta_W$, which will also be performed at MESA via parity-violating electron-proton scattering, will be discussed as well. Precision measurements of this kind have the potential to test New Physics models up to the several TeV mass scale and are complementary to direct searches at the LHC.

Slides mesa_pdf.pdf