2008/11/03 by Marieke Postma, Javier Redondo
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Dark photon #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Gauge boson #Gauge theory #Hidden sector #Kinetic energy #Mixing (physics) #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Photon #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Stars #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2009/02/005
published as JCAP 0902:005,2009 · 25 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2008/11/03 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/04 · arxiv updated 2010/04/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the possibility that a keV-MeV mass hidden photon (HP), i.e. a hidden sector U(1) gauge boson, accounts for the observed amount of dark matter. We focus on the case where the HP interacts with the standard model sector only through kinetic mixing with the photon. The relic abundance is computed including all relevant plasma effects into the photon's self-energy, which leads to a resonant yield almost independent of the HP mass. The HP can decay into three photons. Moreover, if light enough it can be copiously produced in stars. Including bounds from cosmic photon backgrounds and stellar evolution, we find that the hidden photon can only give a subdominant contribution to the dark matter. This negative conclusion may be avoided if another production mechanism besides kinetic mixing is operative.