Finding BSM Needles in Electromagnetic Haystacks at DUNE

Abstract

In this work, motivated by several beyond the Standard Model signal topologies, we perform detailed background mitigation analyses for the DUNE near detector. Specifically, we investigate $e^+ e^-$, $e^- \gamma$, $\gamma$, and $\gamma\gamma$ final states that may arise from long-lived particles, including light mediators, dark matter, heavy neutral leptons, and axion-like particles (ALPs), decaying or scattering inside the liquid argon detector. To this end, we employ both photophilic and leptophilic ALPs as phenomenological benchmarks. The aforementioned final states leave a hard electromagnetic signature with no hadronic activity above the detector energy thresholds. Nevertheless, such signatures are not immune to backgrounds from neutrino scattering in the detector, which are in the focus of our study. In order to model realistic experimental analyses, we take into account particle misidentification rates, cross-contamination effects, and detector responses. We calculate confidence limit projections for DUNE, thereby presenting realistic capabilities for constraining or discovering new physics manifested through electromagnetic showers.