A solar origin of the XENON1T excess without stellar cooling problems

Abstract

Solar interpretations of the recent XENON1T excess events, such as axion or dark photon emissions from the sun, are thought to be at odds with stellar cooling bounds from the horizontal branch stars and red giants. We propose a simple effective field theory of a dark photon in which a $Z_2$ symmetry forbids a single dark photon emission in the dense stars, thereby evading the cooling bounds, while the $Z_2$ is spontaneously broken in the vacuum and sun, thereby explaining the XENON1T excess. The scalar responsible for the $Z_2$ breaking has an extremely flat potential, but the flatness can be maintained under quantum corrections. The UV completion of the EFT generally requires the existence of new electrically charged particles with sub-TeV masses with $O(1)$ couplings to the dark photon, offering the opportunity to test the scenario further and opening a new window into the dark sector in laboratory experiments.

arXiv comment9 pages, 4 figures; Fifth force, equivalence principle constraints and some references are added. The main conclusions are unchanged

References in corpus (29)

• Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law below the Dark-Energy Length Scale
• Test of the Equivalence Principle Using a Rotating Torsion Balance
• Discovering the QCD Axion with Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
• Excess Electronic Recoil Events in XENON1T
• Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects
• New stellar constraints on dark photons
• Direct Detection Constraints on Dark Photon Dark Matter
• Cool WISPs for stellar cooling excesses
• Stellar Recipes for Axion Hunters
• Helioscope Bounds on Hidden Sector Photons
• The Need for Purely Laboratory-Based Axion-Like Particle Searches
• Compatibility of CAST search with axion-like interpretation of PVLAS results
• Search for long-lived charged particles in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV
• Vectorlike leptons at the Large Hadron Collider
• Search for heavy charged long-lived particles in the ATLAS detector in 36.1 fb${}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Survey of vector-like fermion extensions of the Standard Model and their phenomenological implications
• New limits on dark photons from solar emission and keV scale dark matter
• Search for disappearing tracks in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Solar axions cannot explain the XENON1T excess
• Exploring the robustness of stellar cooling constraints on light particles
• Re-examining the Solar Axion Explanation for the XENON1T Excess
• Reconciling the CAST and PVLAS Results
• Aspects of Nonlinear Effect on Black Hole Superradiance
• Lepton Flavorful Fifth Force and Depth-dependent Neutrino Matter Interactions
• Bounds on fifth forces at the sub-Angstrom length scale
• Hydrogen portal to exotic radioactivity
• Probing the relaxed relaxion and Higgs-portal with S1 & S2
• Dark Photons in the Solar Basin
• Searching for a solar relaxion/scalar with XENON1T and LUX

Cited by in corpus (7)

• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• Direct detection of dark energy: the XENON1T excess and future prospects
• Cosmologically Varying Kinetic Mixing
• The Spectrum of Dark Radiation as a Probe of Reheating
• Xenon-1T excess as a possible signal of a sub-GeV hidden sector dark matter
• Explorations of pseudo-Dirac dark matter having keV splittings and interacting via transition electric and magnetic dipole moments
• Dark Fluxes from Accreting Black Holes and Direct Detections