Dark photon limits from patchy dark screening of the cosmic microwave background

Bibliographic Details
Title: Dark photon limits from patchy dark screening of the cosmic microwave background
Authors: McCarthy, Fiona, Pirvu, Dalila, Hill, J. Colin, Huang, Junwu, Johnson, Matthew C., Rogers, Keir K.
Publication Year: 2024
Collection: Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Subject Terms: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
More Details: Dark photons that kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon give rise to new spectral anisotropies (patchy dark screening) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) due to conversion of photons to dark photons within large-scale structure. We utilize predictions for this patchy dark screening signal to provide the tightest constraints to date on the dark photon kinetic mixing parameter ($\varepsilon \lesssim 4\times 10^{-8}$ (95% confidence level)) over the mass range $10^{-13} \,\, {\rm eV} \lesssim m_{{A^\prime}} \lesssim 10^{-11}$ eV, almost an order of magnitude stronger than previous limits, by applying state-of-the-art component separation techniques to the cross-correlation of $\textit{Planck}$ CMB and $\textit{unWISE}$ galaxy survey data.
Comment: 7+12 pages, 3+13 figures. Data products available at https://users.flatironinstitute.org/~fmccarthy/dark_photon_screening_maps/ V2 only has minor changes to these comments
Document Type: Working Paper
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02546
Accession Number: edsarx.2406.02546
Database: arXiv
More Details
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