LSND Constraints on the Higgs Portal

Abstract

High-luminosity fixed target experiments provide impressive sensitivity to new light weakly coupled degrees of freedom. We revisit the minimal case of a scalar singlet $S$ coupled to the Standard Model through the Higgs portal, that decays visibly to leptons for scalar masses below the di-pion threshold. The dataset from the LSND experiment is found to impose the leading constraints within two mass windows between $m_S\sim 100$ and 350 MeV. In the process, we analyze a number of scalar production channels in the target, finding that proton bremsstrahlung provides the dominant channel at LSND beam energies.

Comments: 8 pages, 6 figures; v2: references and KOTO contour added