English

Global QCD Analysis and Dark Photons

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2023-08-28 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We perform a global QCD analysis of high energy scattering data within the JAM Monte Carlo framework, including a coupling to a dark photon that augments the standard model electroweak coupling via kinetic mixing with the hypercharge BB boson. Including the most recent measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon as a constraint, we find a significant reduction in the combined χ2\chi^2, favoring the inclusion of a dark photon, with a statistical significance in excess of 8σ\sigma. With respect to the experimental data, the improvements in the theoretical predictions are spread across a wide range of xx and Q2Q^2, with the largest improvement corresponding to neutral current data from HERA, while the best fit yields a value of g2g-2 which significantly reduces the disagreement with the latest experimental determination. The best fit yields a dark photon mass in the range 4.2--6.2 GeV and a mixing parameter of order 0.1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.11126,
  title  = {Global QCD Analysis and Dark Photons},
  author = {N. T. Hunt-Smith and W. Melnitchouk and N. Sato and A. W. Thomas and X. G. Wang and M. J. White},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.11126},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

15 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:46:21.168Z