Dark Photon Search at A Circular $e^+e^-$ Collider

Abstract

One of the interesting portals linking a dark sector and the standard model (SM) is the kinetic mixing between the SM $U(1)_Y$ field with a new dark photon $A'$ from a $U(1)_{A'}$ gauge interaction. Stringent limits have been obtained for the kinetic mixing parameter $\epsilon$ through various processes. In this work, we study the possibility of searching for a dark photon interaction at a circular $e^+e^-$ collider through the process $e^+ e^-\to \gamma A^{\prime *} \to \gamma \mu^+\mu^-$. We find that the constraint on $\epsilon^2$ for dark photon mass in the few tens of GeV range, assuming that the $\mu^+\mu^-$ invariant mass can be measured to an accuracy of $0.5\%m_{A'}$, can be better than $3\times 10^{-6}$ for the proposed CEPC with a ten-year running at 3$\sigma$ (statistic) level, and better than $2\times 10^{-6}$ for FCC-ee with even just one-year running at $\sqrt{s} = 240$ GeV, better than the LHC and other facilities can do in a similar dark photon mass range. For FCC-ee, running at $\sqrt{s}=160$ GeV, the constraint can be even better.