Dark sectors 2016 Workshop: community report

This report, based on the Dark Sectors workshop at SLAC in April 2016, summarizes the scientific importance of searches for dark sector dark matter and forces at masses beneath the weak-scale, the status of this broad international field, the important milestones motivating future exploration, and promising experimental opportunities to reach these milestones over the next 5-10 years

Light Dark Matter search in a beam-dump experiment: BDX at Jefferson Lab

The Beam Dump eXperiment (BDX) aims to investigate the existence of light Dark Matter (DM) particles in the MeV-GeV mass range, theoretically well motivated but still barely explored. In this mass range BDX will be sensitive to large regions of DM parameter space, exceeding the discovery potential of existing and planned experiments by up to two orders of magnitude. BDX is an e−-beam thick-target experiment, expected to run at Jefferson Lab, downstream of the Hall A beam dump, receiving up to 1022 electron-on-target (EOT). The detector is made of two main components: an electromagnetic calorimeter (Ecal), and a veto detector used to suppress the background. BDX will be sensitive to elastic and inelastic DM-electron scattering at the level of 10 counts per year, reaching the limit of the irreducible background due to beam-produced neutrinos. The expected signature of the DM interaction in the Ecal is a ~ GeV electromagnetic shower paired with a null activity in the surrounding active veto counters. In order to evaluate the background contributions two approaches were used: the cosmogenic background was extrapolated from results obtained with a prototype running at INFN-LNS (Italy), while the beam- related background was evaluated by GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations. This paper describes the experimental setup and the results of the background studies along with the status and prospectives of the experiment

Streaming Readout of the CLAS12 Forward Tagger Using TriDAS and JANA2

An effort is underway to develop streaming readout data acquisition system for the CLAS12 detector in Jefferson Lab’s experimental Hall-B. Successful beam tests were performed in the spring and summer of 2020 using a 10GeV electron beam from Jefferson Lab’s CEBAF accelerator. The prototype system combined elements of the TriDAS and CODA data acquisition systems with the JANA2 analysis/reconstruction framework. This successfully merged components that included an FPGA stream source, a distributed hit processing system, and software plugins that allowed offline analysis written in C++ to be used for online event filtering. Details of the system design and performance are presented

Streaming readout for next generation electron scattering experiments

Abstract Current and future experiments at the high-intensity frontier are expected to produce an enormous amount of data that needs to be collected and stored for offline analysis. Thanks to the continuous progress in computing and networking technology, it is now possible to replace the standard ‘triggered’ data acquisition systems with a new, simplified and outperforming scheme. ‘Streaming readout’ (SRO) DAQ aims to replace the hardware-based trigger with a much more powerful and flexible software-based one, that considers the whole detector information for efficient real-time data tagging and selection. Considering the crucial role of DAQ in an experiment, validation with on-field tests is required to demonstrate SRO performance. In this paper, we report results of the on-beam validation of the Jefferson Lab SRO framework. We exposed different detectors (PbWO-based electromagnetic calorimeters and a plastic scintillator hodoscope) to the Hall-D electron-positron secondary beam and to the Hall-B production electron beam, with increasingly complex experimental conditions. By comparing the data collected with the SRO system against the traditional DAQ, we demonstrate that the SRO performs as expected. Furthermore, we provide evidence of its superiority in implementing sophisticated AI-supported algorithms for real-time data analysis and reconstruction

Measurement of the intrinsic hadronic contamination in the NA64−e high-purity e⁺/e⁻ beam at CERN

We present the measurement of the intrinsic hadronic contamination at the CERN SPS H4 beamline configured to transport electrons and positrons at 100 GeV/c. The analysis, performed using data collected by the NA64-e experiment in 2022, is based on calorimetric measurements, exploiting the different interaction mechanisms of electrons and hadrons in the NA64 detector. We determined the contamination by comparing the results obtained using the nominal electron/positron beamline configuration with those from a dedicated setup, in which only hadrons impinged on the detector. We also obtained an estimate of the relative protons, anti-protons and pions yield by exploiting the different absorption probabilities of these particles in matter. We cross-checked our results with a dedicated Monte Carlo simulation for the hadron production at the primary T2 target, finding a good agreement with the experimental measurements.ISSN:0168-9002ISSN:1872-957

Search for a light Z′ in the Lμ-Lτ scenario with the NA64-e experiment at CERN

The extension of Standard Model made by inclusion of additional U(1) gauge Lμ-Lτ symmetry can explain the difference between the measured and the predicted value of the muon magnetic moment and solve the tension in B meson decays. This model predicts the existence of a new, light Z′ vector boson, predominantly coupled to second and third generation leptons, whose interaction with electrons is due to a loop mechanism involving muons and taus. In this work, we present a rigorous evaluation of the upper limits in the Z′ parameter space, obtained from the analysis of the data collected by the NA64-e experiment at CERN SPS, that performed a search for light dark matter with 2.84×1011 electrons impinging with 100 GeV on an active thick target. The resulting limits touch the muon g-2 preferred band for values of the Z′ mass of order of 1 MeV, while the sensitivity projections for the future high-statistics NA64-e runs demonstrate the power of the electrons/positron beam approach in this theoretical scenario.ISSN:1550-7998ISSN:0556-2821ISSN:1550-236

Dark Sectors 2016 Workshop: Community Report

This report, based on the Dark Sectors workshop at SLAC in April 2016, summarizes the scientific importance of searches for dark sector dark matter and forces at masses beneath the weak-scale, the status of this broad international field, the important milestones motivating future exploration, and promising experimental opportunities to reach these milestones over the next 5-10 years