Abstrakt
The NA62 experiment at CERN, designed to study the ultra-rare decay K+ -> pi(+) nu(nu) over bar, has also collected data in beam-dump mode. In this configuration, dark photons may be produced by protons dumped on an absorber and reach a decay volume beginning 80 m downstream.
A search for dark photons decaying in flight to mu(+) mu(-) pairs is reported, based on a sample of 1.4 x 10(17) protons on dump collected in 2021. No evidence for a dark photon signal is observed.
A region of the parameter space is excluded at 90% CL, improving on previous experimental limits for dark photon masses between 215 and 550MeV/c(2).