Exotic Particles at the DUNE Near Detector from Charged Pion Scattering

Abstract: Fixed-target proton-beam experiments produce a multitude of charged pions that rescatter in the beam dump. These charged pion scattering events can be an additional irreducible source of exotic particles which couple to photons or hadrons. We analyze the sensitivity of the DUNE Near Detector complex to millicharged particles (MCPs) and heavy axion-like particles (ALPs) with low-energy couplings to gluons. Using the framework of chiral perturbation theory, we demonstrate regimes of parameter space where the charged pion production channel dominates over previously-considered production mechanisms for both MCPs and ALPs, thereby improving the sensitivity of DUNE to these new particles compared to previous studies.