A helical-shape scintillating fiber trigger and tracker system for the DarkLight experiment and beyond

The search for new physics beyond the Standard Model has interesting possibilities at low energies. For example, the recent 6.8σ anomaly reported in the invariant mass of e⁺e⁻ pairs from ⁸Be nuclear transitions and the discrepancy between predicted and measured values of muon g-2 give strong motivations for a protophobic fifth-force model. At low energies, the electromagnetic interaction is well understood and produces straightforward final states, making it an excellent probe of such models. However, to achieve the required precision, an experiment must address the substantially higher rate of electromagnetic backgrounds. In this paper, we present the results of simulation studies of a trigger system, motivated by the DarkLight experiment, using helical-shape scintillating fibers in a solenoidal magnetic field to veto electron–proton elastic scattering and the associated radiative processes. We also assess the performance of a tracking detector for lepton final states using scintillating fibers in the same setup.