Dark Photon decay generated by muons in the SHiP experiment

Abstract: This project has investigated the muon background of the SHiP experiment to determine whether it can boost the experiment sensitivity to visible Dark Photon decay. Using Fermi-Weizsäcker-Williams approximation to muon scattering we found the probability of muons generating massive photons, using Bremsstrahlung and direct lepton pair production as an estimation of the frequency of muon EM-interactions. In this work we only considered muons with momenta above 10 GeV/c. The number of visible Dark Photon decays was calculated for a range of the coupling constant and photon mass. The resulting range that promised visible decay has already been excluded by previous experiments, but the method could be used to further investigate enhanced production of Dark Photons from muons and electrons, and possibly also production of Axion-like particles. The work could also be used to estimate sensitivities of other experiments using muons.