Seeking a Fifth Force with DarkLight

In addition to cosmic motivations, anomalies in precision nuclear and atomic measurements have prompted standard model extensions in the form of Dark Photons or, more generically, a new force-carrier. Existing experimental searches for such particles have probed the majority of the parameter space of simple models, but so far no culprit has been found and the standard-model anomalies remain unexplained. The recent report of anomalous correlations in $^4$He transitions, joining a similar anomaly in $^8$Be, has heightened interest in a potential new particle near 17MeV. Although this region has been partially explored via hadronic production mechanisms, a particle with proto-phobic couplings is more effectively probed using leptonic production. The DarkLight experiment proposes to search for this particle ($A'$) in electron-nuclear scattering via the process $e^-X\rightarrow e^-XA'\rightarrow e^-Xe^+e^-$. I will give a brief review of motivations for the search and discuss the DarkLight proposal to install a spectrometer pair at Jefferson Lab's CEBAF Injector to search for this new particle, as well as prospects for future searches at high-intensity beams such as Cornell's CBETA.