Regular Article

Searching for light dark matter through Positronium decay^★

¹ School of Natural Sciences and Technology, Universidad del Turabo, Gurabo, PR 00778, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

^a e-mail: jprios84@gmail.com

Received: 26 September 2017
Received in final form: 9 November 2017
Published online: 8 March 2018

Abstract

A novel approach to detect light dark matter through the observation of a single photon in the decay of Positronium (Ps) is proposed. Branching ratio calculations indicate that light dark matter coupling to the Standard Model through a novel dark vector boson in the mass range m_A′ = 10–500 keV with strength ϵ = 2 × 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁸ is well above the previously computed Standard Model background decay Ps → γν̄ν and could be sensitive to observation.