Effects of massive photons from the dark sector on the muon content in extensive air showers

2013/07/09 by Jan Ebr, Petr Nečesal · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Air shower #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Bremsstrahlung #Cosmic ray #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Electron #Monte Carlo method #Muon #Nuclear physics #Optics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Photon #Physics #Production (economics) #Statistics #Unobservable #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2013.07.007

published in Physics Letters B 725(4-5), 185-189 (Elsevier BV) · Accepted for publication in Physics Letters B on 9 July 2013

openalex publication_date 2013/07/09 · arxiv created 2013/07/15 · arxiv updated 2013/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Inspired by recent astrophysical observations of leptonic excesses measured by satellite experiments, we consider the impact of some general models of the dark sector on the muon production in extensive air showers. We present a compact approximative expression for the bremsstrahlung of a massive photon from an electron and use it within Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the amount of weakly interacting photon-like massive particles that could be produced in an extensive air shower. We find that the resulting muon production is by many orders of magnitude below the average muon count in a shower and thus unobservable.

Citations

• Hadronic Interactions at Cosmic Ray Energies
• A comprehensive study of shower to shower fluctuations
• Kinetic mixing as the origin of a light dark-gauge-group scale
• A theory of dark matter
• Study of multi-muon bundles in cosmic ray showers detected with the DELPHI detector at LEP
• The Pierre Auger Observatory I: The Cosmic Ray Energy Spectrum and Related Measurements

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