Searching Hidden-sector Photons inside a Superconducting Box

Abstract

We propose an experiment to search for extra "hidden-sector" U(1) gauge bosons with gauge kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon, predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. The setup consists of a highly sensitive magnetometer inside a superconducting shielding. This is then placed inside a strong (but sub-critical) magnetic field. In ordinary electrodynamics the magnetic field cannot permeate the superconductor and no field should register on the magnetometer. However, photon -- hidden-sector photon -- photon oscillations would allow to penetrate the superconductor and the magnetic field would "leak" into the shielded volume and register on the magnetometer. Although this setup resembles a classic ``light shining though a wall experiment'' there are two crucial differences. First, the fields are (nearly) static and the photons involved are virtual. Second, the magnetometer directly measures the field-strength and not a probability. This improves the dependence of the signal on the kinetic mixing chi (\ll 1) to chi^2 instead of chi^4. For hidden photon masses in the range 0.002-200 meV the projected sensitivity for the mixing parameter lies in the 5 10^-9 to 10^-6 range. This surpasses current astrophysical and laboratory limits by several orders of magnitude -- ample room to discover new physics.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Cosmological parameters from combining the Lyman-alpha forest with CMB, galaxy clustering and SN constraints
• Heterotic GUT and Standard Model Vacua from simply connected Calabi-Yau Manifolds
• Search for axion-like particles using a variable baseline photon regeneration technique
• Helioscope Bounds on Hidden Sector Photons
• No light shining through a wall : new results from a photoregeneration experiment
• Laser experiments explore the hidden sector
• Signatures of a hidden cosmic microwave background
• Light from the Hidden Sector
• A Cavity Experiment to Search for Hidden Sector Photons
• Observational bounds on the cosmic radiation density
• Cosmology of neutrinos and extra light particles after WMAP3
• Constraint on the Effective Number of Neutrino Species from the WMAP and SDSS LRG Power Spectra
• On search for eV hidden sector photons in Super-Kamiokande and CAST experiments

Cited by in corpus (5)

• New Fixed-Target Experiments to Search for Dark Gauge Forces
• Microwave Background Constraints on Mixing of Photons with Hidden Photons
• Probing Hidden Sector Photons through the Higgs Window
• Tunneling of the 3rd kind
• Bounds on Very Weakly Interacting Sub-eV Particles (WISPs) from Cosmology and Astrophysics