WNPPC2024 - 61st Winter Nuclear Particle Physics Conference

Search for the X-17 Particle in Montreal

16 Feb 2024, 20:00

15m

Salon AB (Hotel Chateau Bromont)

Contributed Oral Evening 2 - Feb. 16, 2024

Speaker

Arvind Gupta (University of Montreal)

Description

The Particle Physics Group at the Montreal Tandem Accelerator is currently working on setting up an experiment to verify the existence of the so-called X-17 particle. This supposed particle of mass 17 MeV/$c^2$ was first claimed to be observed by the ATOMKI experiment in the decays of excited ${}^{8}Be$ and ${}^{4}He$ nuclei to their ground states via internal e+ e- pair creation. The anomaly observed in the angular correlations of e+ e- pairs suggests the existence of a potential dark boson. The Montreal experiment aims to independently reproduce this result and is using a multiwire proportional chamber with scintillator bars surrounding it, giving it an acceptance solid angle close to 4π. Data acquisition hardware has been tested and is being deployed, we aim to perform beam runs and data acquisition in early 2024 and expect results by summer 2024.

Presentation materials

WNPPC Presentation Arvind.pptx