Page History

The Heavy Photon Search Group at SLAC is collaborating with physicists at Jefferson Lab, Fermilab, and UCSC in two experiments aimed at discovering a hidden-sector, heavy photon. Such a particle would have mass in the range 0.02 to 1.0 GeV, couple weakly to electrons, and decay to e^^e-^{. It would be produced by electron bremstrahlung on a heavy target, and be identified as a narrow ee}-^ resonance. Weak couplings of this heavy photon to electrons account for its having not yet been discovered and can give rise to separated vertices in its decay, providing a spectacular signature. Heavy photons have become a hot topic recently because they may explain high energy electrons and positrons in cosmic rays and be intimately linked to dark matter annihilation.

...