Speaker
Description
Many extensions to the Standard Model (SM) introduce a hidden or a dark sector rising from an additional U(1)d gauge symmetry, to provide candidates for dark matter in the universe and a possible explanation to astrophysical observations such as the positron excess observed in the cosmic radiation flux. The gauge boson of the dark sector would be either a massless or a massive dark photon that can either kinetically mix with the SM photon, or couple to the Higgs sector via some mediators. If dark photons decay back to the SM particles with a significant branching ratio, we could either observe measurable deviations in some particular Higgs decay channels or new exotic signatures that would be accessible at the LHC energies. An overview of different dark photon searches using the ATLAS detector will be presented, targeting a wide range of Higgs bosons as well as dark photon masses. Experimental limits on the dark photon production in the ATLAS detector are presented for different Higgs boson production mechanisms.
