Search for light dark sectors using electron-photon collisions

A bstract The dark photon is a new gauge boson that naturally arises in many beyond-the-Standard-Model scenarios and couples to the electromagnetic current through kinetic mixing. Owing to this feature, it is often considered a portal between the dark and visible sectors and has therefore become the target of numerous experimental searches worldwide. In this work, we propose a search for dark photons based on inverse Compton scattering, γe − → A ′ e − , to be conducted at electron accelerators. In this setup, photons from a laser source impinge on an accelerated electron beam, producing a dark photon in the final state. We investigate two complementary search strategies based on the resulting missing-energy signature: a single-photon-veto approach and a measurement of the recoil-electron energy spectrum, with angular information considered as an extension of the latter. We derive the projected sensitivity assuming an incident photon energy of about 1 eV and an electron beam energy of 3 GeV. We show that this experimental setup could cover an unexplored region of parameter space and constitute a promising probe of dark sectors in the future.