Speaker
Description
Dark matter is one of our universe's greatest mysteries and very little is known about what it is. One of the dominating theories, that dark matter originates from an early universe thermal relic, indicates that it interacts with the Standard Model. If this is the case, dark matter can be produced at accelerators. The Light Dark Matter eXperiment, LDMX, is an upcoming experiment that will join the search for dark matter in the 1 to several 100 MeV mass range.
LDMX aims to detect dark matter indirectly by searching for missing momentum signals. To be able to see the signal it is important to filter out all the background. Previous studies have shown a limiting background with a very low nominal rate. It has been found that kaons, especially charged ones are the most difficult to filter out since the trace they leave in the LDMX detector resembles the signal. To study this in more detail, we would like to have more statistics. By manipulating simulations to artificially increase the rate of photo-nuclear processes producing kaons we have achieved this. However, we need to check if we also introduce other changes or unphysical behavior with this modification. Once these validations are performed, a veto strategy can be developed and optimized to reach the zero background goal of LDMX.
This contribution will present a study of the kaons produced in simulations where the kaon production is artificially enhanced.
