Hidden Photons from the Sun

Abstract

A brief account of the phenomenon of photon oscillations into sub-eV mass hidden photons is given and used to estimate the flux and properties of these hypothetical particles from the Sun. A new generation of dedicated helioscopes, the Solar Hidden Photon Search (SHIPS) in the Hamburg Observatory amongst them, will cover a vast region of parameter space.

The Sun in Hidden Photons

“…For nonzero HP mass, the resonant condition becomes m 2 γ −m 2 γ ′ = 0 and the regions of resonant conversion move deeper into the Sun as m 2 γ grows more positive inside the Sun where the density and the ionization fraction are larger, see [14]. In Fig.…”

Search for Hidden photons with Sumico

“…We, therefore, waited for four 95 % Confidence level upper limits to the mixing parameter χ set by this experiment. Present result (a) is obtained based on the the newer solar hidden photon flux calculation [12,13] and (b) on the older conservative estimation [11]. Excluded area by other experiments are; Coulomb: tests of Coulomb's law [18,19], LSW: Light Shining through Walls experiments [20,21,22,23], CAST keV: the CAST experiment [11], FIRAS: FIRAS CMB spectrum [24], Sun-L: the solar luminosity constraints in the longitudinal channel [14,15], and XENON10: interpretation of the XENON10 result in view of the longitudinal solar hidden photons [16].…”

“…Recently, a refined estimation including the contribution from a thin resonant region below the photosphere is given [12,13] for four typical cases m γ ′ = 0, 0.01, 0.1 and 1 eV. They claim that the resonant production dominates over the emission from the rest of the sun.…”

Astrophysical searches for a hidden-photon signal in the radio regime

“…Pioneering work on the phenomenology of hidden photons has already focussed on astrophysical implications of low-mass hidden photons [4,5]. Subsequently, evidence for the γ-γ s oscillations has been searched for in a number of laboratory [27][28][29][30][31][32] and astrophysical experiments [8,18,29,[33][34][35][36], focusing in particular on "light shining through the wall" (LSW, [37]) experiments such as ALPS [28] and searches for hidden photons from the Sun (SHIPS; [29,38]). The non-detection of hiddenphoton signals has so far yielded strong bounds on the kinetic mixing parameter χ for a broad range of hiddenphoton masses [7,8,15, and references therein].…”