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  • Letter
  • Open Access

New physics at a neutron beam dump

P. S. Bhupal Dev1,*, Bhaskar Dutta2,†, Tao Han3,‡, Aparajitha Karthikeyan2,§, Doojin Kim2,4,∥, and Hyunyong Kim2,¶

  • 1Department of Physics and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
  • 2Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA
  • 3PITT PACC, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, University of South Dakota, 414 East Clark Street, Vermillion, South Dakota 57069, USA

  • *Contact author: bdev@wustl.edu
  • †Contact author: dutta@tamu.edu
  • ‡Contact author: than@pitt.edu
  • §Contact author: aparajitha_96@tamu.edu
  • ∥Contact author: doojin.kim@usd.edu
  • Contact author: hyunyong@cern.ch
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Phys. Rev. D 110, L051703 – Published 23 September, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.L051703

Abstract

We find a new utility of neutrons, usually treated as an experimental nuisance causing unwanted background, in probing new physics signals. The new physics signals can either be radiated from neutrons (neutron bremsstrahlung) or appear through secondary particles from neutron-on-target interactions, dubbed “neutron beam dump.” As a concrete example, we take the FASER/FASER2 experiment as a “factory” of high-energy neutrons that interact with the iron dump. We find that if new physics particles had the same interaction strength to protons and neutrons, their production rate via neutron-initiated bremsstrahlung would be comparable to that via proton-initiated ones, in terms of the resulting flux and the range of couplings that can be probed. The neutron bremsstrahlung can be used, for instance, to probe dark gauge bosons with nonzero neutron coupling. In particular, we investigate protophobic gauge bosons and find that FASER/FASER2 can probe new parameter space. We also illustrate the possibility of neutron-induced secondary particles by considering axionlike particles with electron couplings. We conclude that the physics potential of FASER/FASER2 in terms of new physics searches can be greatly extended and improved with the inclusion of neutron interactions.

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Phys. Rev. D 110, L051703– Published 23 September, 2024
  • Received 25 December 2023
  • Accepted 6 August 2024
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