Physicists confirm possible discovery of fifth force of nature

Physicists confirm possible discovery of fifth force of nature
August 15, 2016

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

"If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe," says UCI professor of physics & astronomy Jonathan Feng, including what holds together galaxies such as this spiral one, called NGC 6814. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters by theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine.

"If true, it's revolutionary," said Jonathan Feng, professor of physics & astronomy. "For decades, we've known of four fundamental forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter."

R


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-physicists-discovery-nature.html#jCp

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.03591v1.pdf

Particle Physics Models for the 17 MeV Anomaly in Beryllium Nuclear Decays

Abstract
The 6.8σ anomaly in excited 8Be nuclear decays via internal pair creation is fit well by a new particle interpretation. In a previous analysis, we showed that a 17 MeV protophobic gauge boson provides a particle physics explanation of the anomaly consistent with all existing constraints. Here we begin with a review of the physics of internal pair creation in 8Be decays and the characteristics of the observed anomaly. To develop its particle interpretation, we provide an effective operator analysis for excited 8Be decays to particles with a variety of spins and parities and show that these considerations exclude simple models with scalar or pseudoscalar particles. We discuss the required couplings for a gauge boson to give the observed signal, highlighting the significant dependence on the precise mass of the boson and isospin mixing and breaking effects. We present anomaly-free extensions of the Standard Model that contain protophobic gauge bosons with the desired couplings to explain the 8Be anomaly. In the first model, the new force carrier is a U(1)B gauge boson that kinetically mixes with the photon; in the second model, it is a U(1)B−L gauge boson with a similar kinetic mixing. In both cases, the models predict relatively large charged lepton couplings ∼ 0.001 that can resolve the discrepancy in the muon anomalous magnetic moment and are amenable to many experimental probes. The models also contain vectorlike leptons at the weak scale that may be accessible to near future LHC searches.

Journal reference:Physical Review Letters

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

wow, that would be awesome!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.