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  • Improved limits on a hypoth...
    Banerjee, D.; Bernhard, J.; Burtsev, V. E.; Chumakov, A. G.; Cooke, D.; Crivelli, P.; Depero, E.; Dermenev, A. V.; Donskov, S. V.; Dusaev, R. R.; Enik, T.; Charitonidis, N.; Feshchenko, A.; Frolov, V. N.; Gardikiotis, A.; Gerassimov, S. G.; Gninenko, S. N.; Hösgen, M.; Jeckel, M.; Kachanov, V. A.; Karneyeu, A. E.; Kekelidze, G.; Ketzer, B.; Kirpichnikov, D. V.; Kirsanov, M. M.; Kolosov, V. N.; Konorov, I. V.; Kovalenko, S. G.; Kramarenko, V. A.; Kravchuk, L. V.; Krasnikov, N. V.; Kuleshov, S. V.; Lyubovitskij, V. E.; Lysan, V.; Matveev, V. A.; Mikhailov, Yu. V.; Molina Bueno, L.; Peshekhonov, D. V.; Polyakov, V. A.; Radics, B.; Rojas, R.; Rubbia, A.; Samoylenko, V. D.; Shchukin, D.; Tikhomirov, V. O.; Tlisova, I.; Tlisov, D. A.; Toropin, A. N.; Trifonov, A. Yu; Vasilishin, B. I.; Vasquez Arenas, G.; Volkov, P. V.; Volkov, V. Yu; Ulloa, P.

    Physical review. D, 04/2020, Volume: 101, Issue: 7
    Journal Article

    The improved results on a direct search for a new X ( 16.7 MeV ) boson that could explain the anomalous excess of e+e− pairs observed in the decays of the excited 8Be ∗ nuclei ("Berillium or X17 anomaly") are reported. Interestingly, new recent results in the nuclear transitions of another nucleus, 4 He , seems to support this anomaly spurring the need for an independent measurement. If the X boson exists, it could be produced in the bremsstrahlung reaction e − Z → e − Z X by a high energy beam of electrons incident on the active target in the NA64 experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron and observed through its subsequent decay into e+e− pairs. No evidence for such decays was found from the combined analysis of the data samples with total statistics corresponding to 8.4 × 1010 electrons on target collected in 2017 and 2018. This allows one to set new limits on the X−e− coupling in the range 1.2 × 10−4 ≲ ε e ≲ 6.8 × 10−4 , excluding part of the parameter space favored by the X17 anomaly, and setting new bounds on the mixing strength of photons with dark photons ( A ′ ) with a mass ≲ 24 MeV . For the 2018 run, the setup was optimized to probe the region of parameter space characterized by a large coupling ε . This allowed a significant improvement in sensitivity despite a relatively modest increase in statistics.