Serendipity in dark photon searches

Abstract

Searches for dark photons provide serendipitous discovery potential for other types of vector particles. We develop a framework for recasting dark photon searches to obtain constraints on more general theories, which includes a data-driven method for determining hadronic decay rates. We demonstrate our approach by deriving constraints on a vector that couples to the $B-L$ current, a leptophobic $B$ boson that couples directly to baryon number and to leptons via $B$-$\gamma$ kinetic mixing, and on a vector that mediates a protophobic force. Our approach can easily be generalized to any massive gauge boson with vector couplings to the Standard Model fermions, and software to perform any such recasting is provided at https://gitlab.com/philten/darkcast .

Comments: 33 pages, 11 figures