New stellar constraints on dark photons

By H. An, M. Pospelov, J. Pradler. 2013

301 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We consider the stellar production of vector states V within the minimal model of “dark photons”. We show that when the Stuckelberg mass of the dark vector becomes smaller than plasma frequency, the emission rate is dominated by the production of the longitudinal modes of V, and scales as κ 2 m V 2 , where κ and m V are the mixing angle with the photon and the mass of the dark state. This is in contrast with widespread assertions in the literature that the emission rate decouples as the forth power of the mass. We derive ensuing constraints on the ( κ , m V ) parameter space by calculating the cooling rates for the Sun and horizontal branch stars. We find that stellar bounds for m V 10 eV are significantly strengthened, to the extent that all current “light-shining-through-wall” experiments find themselves within deeply excluded regions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/601dac3e92e3e2f324f92158a5d4b06530010e56

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Vector Dark Matter from Inflationary Fluctuations (2015, background): “These bounds include stellar production of the vector [51, 52], precision tests of electromagnetism [29, 30, 53], and distortion of the CMB due to conversion of photons into the vector [54].”
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, background): “eV, stellar constraints have been worked out in detail in the literature [87, 88].”
Cosmology with a very light Lμ − Lτ gauge boson (2019, background): “[43, 44] can straightforwardly be adapted to constrain the Lμ − Lτ model.”
Cool WISPs for stellar cooling excesses (2015, background): “If the hidden scalar is light, the phenomenology would be essentially equivalent to that of any other minicharged particle [38] and it could dominate the stellar losses [34].”
Dark matter models and direct detection (2019, background): “[92, 89, 91, 119, 90] for the Sun, red giants, horizontal branch stars, and SN1987a.”
Solar axion flux from the axion-electron coupling (2013, background): “Recent papers also showed that in some cases the emission of longitudinally polarized modes can dominate [94, 115].”
Constraining light dark matter with diffuse X-ray and gamma-ray observations (2013, background): “Assuming mγd ' mγ̃d , additional constraints exist from beam-dump [82, 83], fixedtarget [84, 85], and colliding-beam experiments [86]; precision measurements [87]; stars [88, 89]; and from the intergalactic diffuse photon background (IDPB).”
Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects (2016, background): “In an active/sterile basis, this suppression comes from the propagator for the heavy active state [6].”
Any Light Particle Search II -- Technical Design Report (2013, background): “s the reach of ALPS-IIb, with and without gas, respectively. For the parameter choices with gas, see main text. The black dashed lines enclose the HP Dark Radiation hint [64], however recent analyses [68, 69] exclude the parameter range above the line labeled “Longitudinal, thus disfavoring this int”
Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials (2017, background): “The effective mixing angle between the dark photon and the photon for the case of absorption of nonrelativistic DM in the target is given by [73,101]”