Probing sub-GeV dark sectors via high energy proton beams at LBNF/DUNE and MiniBooNE

Understand

We study the sensitivity to sub-GeV dark sectors of high energy ($ \geq100$ GeV) proton fixed target experiments such as the Main Injector and the future Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF).

• We focus on off-axis detectors since they have been shown to be the ideal location to reduce the neutrino background.
• We consider MiniBooNE as an off-axis detector for the NuMI facility and a hypotetical detector for LBNF located 200 m away from the target and 6.5 degrees off-axis.
• We find that with the existing data, MiniBoone can explore new regions of the parameter space for leptophobic dark forces in the 100 MeV- few GeV mass range.