2024/03/14 by Chauhan, Garv, Xu, Xun-Jie · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Neutrino Physics Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.09783
openalex publication_date 2024/03/14 · openalex created_date 2024/03/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Light bosons can mediate long-range forces. We show that light bosonic mediators interacting with a background medium, in particular, with the cosmic neutrino background (CνB), may induce medium-dependent masses which could effectively screen long-range forces from detection. This leads to profound implications for long-range force searches in e.g. the Eöt-Wash, MICROSCOPE, and lunar laser-ranging (LLR) experiments. For instance, we find that when the coupling of the mediator to neutrinos is above 3×10-10 or 5×10-13, bounds from LLR and experiments employing the Sun as an attractor, respectively, would be entirely eliminated. Larger values of the coupling can also substantially alleviate bounds from searches conducted at shorter distances.