Inelastic Dark Matter Revives the Dark Photon Explanation of the Muon g-2 Anomaly.

Speaker: Gopolang (Gopi) Mohlabeng

A massive U(1)' gauge boson known as a “dark photon” or A', has long been proposed as a potential explanation for the muon g − 2 anomaly. Recently, experimental results have excluded this possibility for a dark photon decaying visibly and invisibly. I revisit this idea and consider a model where A' couples to inelastic dark matter, leading to a semi-visible decay mode. I show that for large mass splittings between the dark sector states this decay mode is enhanced, weakening the invisibly decaying dark photon bounds. As a consequence, A' resolves the g−2 anomaly in a region of parameter space the thermal dark matter component of the Universe is readily explained.