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size are beautifully fit by a new boson with mass mX = The 17 MeV X boson is produced through hadronic
16.7 0.35 (stat) 0.5 (sys) MeV and relative branching couplings, but can decay only to e+ e , , or . (We
ratio B(8 Be 8 Be X)/B(8 Be 8 Be ) = 5.6 106 , assume there are no decays to unknown particles.) The
assuming B(X e+ e ) = 1. With these values, the fit three-photon decay is negligible, and we will assume that
had a 2 /dof = 1.07. decays to neutrinos are also highly suppressed, for rea-
Protophobic Gauge Bosons. A priori the X boson sons given below. The X boson then decays through its
may be a scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial vector, or electron coupling with width [9]
even a spin-2 particle. Some of these cases are easy to
m2X + 2m2e
q
dismiss. If parity is conserved, the X boson cannot be (X e+ e ) = 2e 1 4m2e /m2X . (6)
a scalar: in a 1+ 0+ 0+ transition, angular momen- 3mX
tum conservation requires the final state to have L = 1,
The X boson is produced with velocity v 0.35c in
but parity conservation requires +1 = (1)L . Decays to
the 8 Be frame, which is moving non-relativistically with
a pseudoscalar 0 state are not forbidden by any sym-
v = 0.017c relative to the lab frame. The X mean decay
metry, but are severely constrained by experiment. For
length is L 2e 1.8 10
12
m in the lab frame. The X
such axion-like particles a, the two-photon interaction
boson must decay promptly in the experimental setup of
ga aF F is almost certainly present at some level,
Refs. [3, 6] so that the e+ e decay products are detected
but for ma 17 MeV, all coupling values in the range
and the measurements are not distorted. Requiring
1/(1018 GeV) < ga < 1/(10 GeV) are excluded [7, 8].
L . 1 cm, for example, implies
Here we focus on the vector case. We consider a mas-
sive spin-1 Abelian gauge boson X that couples non-
|e | & 1.3 105 . (7)
chirally to standard model (SM) fermions with charges
f in units of e. The new Lagrangian terms are From Eq. (5), we see that a dark photon cannot ex-
1 1 plain the 8 Be anomaly. For a dark photon, fermions
L = X X + m2X X X X J , (1) have charges proportional to their SM charges, f = qf ,
4 2
where is the kinetic mixing parameter, and so Eq. (5)
where X has P field strength X and couples to the cur- implies 0.011. This is excluded by many experi-
rent J = f ef f f , or, at the nucleon level, JN = ments, and most stringently by NA48/2, which requires
ep p p+en n
n, with p = 2u +d and n = u +2d . < max = 8 104 at 90% CL [10]. The authors of
We first determine what values of the charges are re- Ref. [3] estimated that 2 107 can fit the signal, but
quired to fit the 8 Be signal. The characteristic energy p|3
this value of is far too small, in part because of the |~
scale of the decay 8 Be 8 Be X is 10 MeV, and so we suppression of the signal.
may consider an effective theory in which 8 Be , 8 Be, and The NA48/2 bound, however, does not exclude a gen-
X are the fundamental degrees of freedom. The one effec- eral vector boson interpretation of the 8 Be anomaly. The
tive operator consistent with the J P quantum numbers NA48/2 limit is a bound on 0 X. In the general
of these states is gauge boson case, this is proportional to the anomaly
trace factor N (u qu d qd )2 . Applying the dark
1
8 Be 8 Be X 8 Be . photon bound N < 2max /9, we find that, for a general
Lint = (2)
gauge boson,
The matrix element h8 BeX|Lint |8 Be i is proportional
to h8 Be|JN |8 Be i = (e/2)(p + n )M, where M = |2u + d | < max = 8 104 . (8)
h8 Be|(
p p + n n)|8 Be i contains the isoscalar compo-
Equations (5) and (8) may be satisfied with a mild 10%
nent of the current, since the initial and final states are
cancelation, provided the charges satisfy
both isoscalars. The resulting decay width is
d p
(e/2)2 (p + n )2 2.3 < < 1.8 , 0.067 < < 0.078 . (9)
8
( Be Be X) =8
|M|2 |~
pX |3 . (3) u n
32
Given the latter condition, we call the general class of
To fit the signal, we need vector models that can both explain the 8 Be anomaly
B(8 Be 8 Be X) p X |3 and satisfy pion decay constraints protophobic.
2 |~
= ( p + n ) 5.6 106 , (4) Constraints from Other Experiments. Although there
B(8 Be 8 Be ) p |3
|~
is no need for the gauge boson to decouple from protons
where both the nuclear matrix elements and the scale completely, for simplicity, for the rest of this work, we
have canceled in the ratio. For mX = 17 MeV, we require consider the extreme protophobic limit where p = 0.
|p + n | 0.011, or We parameterize the quark charges as u = 31 n , d =
2
3 n and determine what choices for n , e , and are
|u + d | 3.7 103 . (5) viable. We focus on these first-generation charges, as the
3
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