New Bounds from Positronium Decays on Massless Mirror Dark Photons

Vigo, Carlos; Gerchow, Lars; Radics, B.; Raaijmakers, Mark; Rubbia, A.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.124.101803

“…Dark photons and mirror matter help each other to stay hidden from direct experimental searches, such as experiments like XENON1T [33], or in the search for invisible decays of positronium [34]. Indeed, it is clear from (9) that positronium can oscillate into mirror positronium through B µ or Bµ exchange.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dark photon portal into mirror world

Alizzi,

Silagadze

2021

Preprint

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Dark photons and mirror matter are well-motivated dark matter candidates. It is possible that both of them arose during the compactification and symmetry breaking scenario of the heterotic E8 × E8 string theory and are related to each other. In this case, dark photons can become a natural portal into the mirror world. Unfortunately, the expected magnitude of the induced interactions of ordinary matter with mirror matter is too small to be of phenomenological interest.

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“…This can naturally be induced by kinetic mixing term between ordinary and mirror photons ( /2)F μν F μν [19] which effectively makes mirror electrons and protons minicharged (with ordinary electric charges ∼ ), with interesting implications for the dark matter direct detection [112,113]. The cosmological bounds imply < 5 × 10 −9 or so [114] while the experimental limit from the positronium decays is yet weaker: < 5 × 10 −8 [115]. The neutrons produced in a mirror NS via n → n transition at first stages of its evolution, will decay into electrons and protons.…”

Section: Effects Of Slow N − N Transformation: τ ε > T Umentioning

confidence: 99%

Neutron-mirror neutron mixing and neutron stars

Berezhiani

¹

,

Biondi

²

,

Mannarelli

³

et al. 2021

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The oscillation of neutron n into mirror neutron $$n'$$ n ′ , its mass degenerate partner from dark mirror sector, can gradually transform the neutron stars into the mixed stars consisting in part of mirror dark matter. In quark stars $$n-n'$$ n - n ′ transitions are suppressed. We study the structure of mixed stars and derive the mass-radius scaling relations between the configurations of purely neutron star and maximally mixed star (MMS) containing equal amounts of ordinary and mirror components. In particular, we show that the MMS masses can be at most $$M^{\mathrm{max}}_{NS}/\sqrt{2}$$ M NS max / 2 , where $$M^\mathrm{max}_{NS}$$ M NS max is a maximum mass of a pure neutron star allowed by a given equation of state. We evaluate $$n-n'$$ n - n ′ transition rate in neutron stars, and show that various astrophysical limits on pulsar properties exclude the transition times in a wide range $$10^{5}\,\text {year}< \tau _\varepsilon < 10^{15}\,\text {year}$$ 10 5 year < τ ε < 10 15 year . For short transition times, $$\tau _\varepsilon < 10^5$$ τ ε < 10 5 year, the different mixed stars of the same mass can have different radii, depending on their age, which possibility can be tested by the NICER measurements. We also discuss subtleties related with the possible existence of mixed quark stars, and possible implications for the gravitational waves from the neutron star mergers and associated electromagnetic signals.

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“…The dominant interaction between the conventional photons and the hidden photons is realized through the gauge kinetic mixing between them. In the literature, different methods have been proposed to constrain the coupling and mass of hidden photons using astrophysical and cosmological observations [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. Here, we will consider only a generic photon-spin-1-massive-particle scattering, leaving the extension of our final set of equations for specific cases to future work.…”

Section: Polarization Mixing From Photon and Massive Spin-1 Particmentioning

confidence: 99%

CMB V modes from photon-photon forward scattering revisited

Hoseinpour

¹

,

Zarei

²

,

Orlando

³

et al. 2020

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Recent literature has shown that photon-photon forward scattering mediated by Euler-Heisenberg interactions may generate some amount of the circular polarization (V modes) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. However, there is an apparent contradiction among the different references about the predicted level of the amplitude of this circular polarization. In this work, we will resolve this discrepancy by showing that with a quantum Boltzmann equation formalism, we obtain the same amount of circular polarization as using a geometrical approach that is based on the index of refraction of the cosmological medium. We will show that the expected amplitude of V modes is expected to be ≈8 orders of magnitude smaller than the amplitude of E-polarization modes that we actually observe in the CMB, thus confirming that it is going to be challenging to observe such a signature. Throughout the paper, we also develop a general method to study the generation of V modes from photon-photon and photon-spin-1massive-particle forward scatterings without relying on a specific interaction, which thus represent possible new signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model.

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New Bounds from Positronium Decays on Massless Mirror Dark Photons

Cited by 18 publications

References 36 publications

Dark photon portal into mirror world

Dark photon portal into mirror world

Neutron-mirror neutron mixing and neutron stars

CMB V modes from photon-photon forward scattering revisited

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