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Dark Photon Oscillations in Our Inhomogeneous Universe

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arxiv 2002.05165 v3 pith:EYARB7EC submitted 2020-02-12 astro-ph.CO hep-ph

classification astro-ph.COhep-ph
keywords photondarkoscillationsmassphotonsplasmaconstraintsformalism
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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A dark photon may kinetically mix with the ordinary photon, inducing oscillations with observable imprints on cosmology. Oscillations are resonantly enhanced if the dark photon mass equals the ordinary photon plasma mass, which tracks the free electron number density. Previous studies have assumed a homogeneous Universe; in this Letter, we introduce for the first time an analytic formalism for treating resonant oscillations in the presence of inhomogeneities of the photon plasma mass. We apply our formalism to determine constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background photons oscillating into dark photons, and from heating of the primordial plasma due to dark photon dark matter converting into low-energy photons. Including the effect of inhomogeneities demonstrates that prior homogeneous constraints are not conservative, and simultaneously extends current experimental limits into a vast new parameter space.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Boomerang mechanism explaining the excess radio background

    hep-ph 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A two-stage mechanism where relic neutrinos convert to dark neutrinos in the early universe and later decay into photon states can explain the ARCADE 2 excess radio background while evading neutrino magnetic moment bounds.

  2. Out of the darkness: probing the inflationary era with dark photon dark matter

    hep-ph 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A confirmed dark photon dark matter detection at 19.5 micro-electronvolts would, via the inflationary production formula, predict tensor modes just below current limits and within reach of next-generation experiments,...

  3. Dark Matter Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is Sensitive to Dark Photons and the Axion-Photon Coupling

    hep-ph 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    CASPEr-Gradient, an NMR axion search, could simultaneously probe dark photon kinetic mixing to about 3e-16 and axion-photon coupling to about 2e-16 GeV^-1 near a mass of 1 micro-eV.

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