The Dark Photon: a 2026 Perspective

Abstract

We give a pedagogical overview of dark photons. We describe the theory and their importance in particle physics research, and discuss searches using laboratory, astrophysical, and cosmological probes.

Contribution to Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, final version with a few additional references

References in corpus (145)

• A Theory of Dark Matter
• Explosion Mechanisms of Core-Collapse Supernovae
• Secluded WIMP Dark Matter
• Freeze-In Production of FIMP Dark Matter
• Dark Matter Self-interactions and Small Scale Structure
• The Low-Energy Frontier of Particle Physics
• WISPy Cold Dark Matter
• Echoes of a Hidden Valley at Hadron Colliders
• Secluded U(1) below the weak scale
• First Dark Matter Search Results from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
• New Fixed-Target Experiments to Search for Dark Gauge Forces
• Scalar Dark Matter candidates
• Direct Detection of Sub-GeV Dark Matter
• Astrophysical Signatures of Secluded Dark Matter
• Search for a dark photon in e+e- collisions at BABAR
• Excess Electronic Recoil Events in XENON1T
• Supernova 1987A Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Sectors, Millicharged Particles, the QCD Axion, and an Axion-like Particle
• Exploring Portals to a Hidden Sector Through Fixed Targets
• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Results on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a New Skipper-CCD
• Dielectric Haloscopes: A New Way to Detect Axion Dark Matter
• Illuminating Dark Photons with High-Energy Colliders
• The Four Basic Ways of Creating Dark Matter Through a Portal
• Cores in Dwarf Galaxies from Dark Matter with a Yukawa Potential
• Broadband and Resonant Approaches to Axion Dark Matter Detection
• Bosonic super-WIMPs as keV-scale dark matter
• Halo Shape and Relic Density Exclusions of Sommerfeld-Enhanced Dark Matter Explanations of Cosmic Ray Excesses
• Search for Invisible Decays of a Dark Photon Produced in e+e- Collisions at BaBar
• U-boson production in e+e- annihilations, psi and Upsilon decays, and Light Dark Matter
• Search for a new gauge boson in the $A^{\prime }$ Experiment (APEX)
• Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects
• New stellar constraints on dark photons
• Constraining Light Dark Matter with Diffuse X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Observations
• Non-Abelian Dark Sectors and Their Collider Signatures
• Kinetic Mixing of the Photon with Hidden U(1)s in String Phenomenology
• Black Hole Superradiance Signatures of Ultralight Vectors
• New Limits on Hidden Photons from Past Electron Beam Dumps
• Probing a Secluded U(1) at B-factories
• Dark Matter Self-Interactions and Light Force Carriers
• Dark photon limits: a handbook
• First Results from ABRACADABRA-10 cm: A Search for Sub-$\mu$eV Axion Dark Matter
• Strong Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from SLAC Beam Dump E137
• General Constraints on Dark Matter Decay from the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Relic Abundance of Dark Photon Dark Matter
• Searching for WISPy Cold Dark Matter with a Dish Antenna
• Constraining the mass of dark photons and axion-like particles through black-hole superradiance
• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Shallow Underground Run Using a Prototype Skipper-CCD
• Tunable axion plasma haloscopes
• SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run
• Solar constraints on hidden photons re-visited
• Instability of anisotropic cosmological solutions supported by vector fields
• Dark Photon Dark Matter Produced by Axion Oscillations
• Axion Dark Matter Detection using an LC Circuit
• Searching for the light dark gauge boson in GeV-scale experiments
• A Radio for Hidden-Photon Dark Matter Detection
• Constraining Light Dark Matter with Low-Energy e+e- Colliders
• Detection of Light Dark Matter With Optical Phonons in Polar Materials
• Massive hidden photons as lukewarm dark matter
• Discovering New Light States at Neutrino Experiments
• Accelerating the Discovery of Light Dark Matter
• Current Dark Matter Annihilation Constraints from CMB and Low-Redshift Data
• Axion and hidden photon dark matter detection with multilayer optical haloscopes
• Parametric Resonance Production of Ultralight Vector Dark Matter
• On Symmetric and Asymmetric Light Dark Matter
• Inclusive Dark Photon Search at LHCb
• Direct Detection of Strongly Interacting Sub-GeV Dark Matter via Electron Recoils
• Vector dark matter production at the end of inflation
• Helioscope Bounds on Hidden Sector Photons
• Search for Light Gauge Bosons of the Dark Sector at the Mainz Microtron
• Dark Matter Detectors as Dark Photon Helioscopes
• Ghost instabilities of cosmological models with vector fields nonminimally coupled to the curvature
• Searching for Dark Absorption with Direct Detection Experiments
• Making dark matter out of light: freeze-in from plasma effects
• Search for pair and single production of vectorlike quarks in final states with at least one $Z$ boson decaying into a pair of electrons or muons in $pp$ collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Dark Matter Search in Nucleon, Pion, and Electron Channels from a Proton Beam Dump with MiniBooNE
• Production of Purely Gravitational Dark Matter: The Case of Fermion and Vector Boson
• Dark photons from charm mesons at LHCb
• A Critical Assessment of CMB Limits on Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering: New Treatment of the Relative Bulk Velocity
• Search for invisible decays of sub-GeV dark photons in missing-energy events at the CERN SPS
• Microwave Background Constraints on Mixing of Photons with Hidden Photons
• New axion and hidden photon constraints from a solar data global fit
• An Electron Fixed Target Experiment to Search for a New Vector Boson A' Decaying to e+e-
• Discovering Inelastic Thermal-Relic Dark Matter at Colliders
• Dark Photon Dark Matter from a Network of Cosmic Strings
• Cosmological Constraints on Very Dark Photons
• Search for vector mediator of Dark Matter production in invisible decay mode
• Gravitational production of vector dark matter
• Search for a Hypothetical 16.7 MeV Gauge Boson and Dark Photons in the NA64 Experiment at CERN
• Completely Dark Photons from Gravitational Particle Production During Inflation
• The Cosmological Evolution of Light Dark Photon Dark Matter
• The Price of Tiny Kinetic Mixing
• Dark Photon Oscillations in Our Inhomogeneous Universe
• Emission of Single and Few Electrons in XENON1T and Limits on Light Dark Matter
• Spectroscopy as a test of Coulomb's law - A probe of the hidden sector
• Dark Matter Search in a Proton Beam Dump with MiniBooNE
• Axion Searches with Microwave Filters: the RADES project
• Cosmological Constraints on Dark Matter Interactions with Ordinary Matter
• Testing GeV-Scale Dark Matter with Fixed-Target Missing Momentum Experiments
• New limits on dark photons from solar emission and keV scale dark matter
• SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Results on sub-GeV Dark Matter from SENSEI at SNOLAB
• Dark Force Detection in Low Energy e-p Collisions
• A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons
• Search for MeV dark photons in a light-shining-through-walls experiment at CERN
• Exploring New Physics with O(keV) Electron Recoils in Direct Detection Experiments
• Misalignment & Co.: (Pseudo-)scalar and vector dark matter with curvature couplings
• The Irreducible Axion Background
• Axion-sourced fireballs from supernovae
• Spectral distortion constraints on photon injection from low-mass decaying particles
• Observable signatures of dark photons from supernovae
• Constraints on dark photons and axion-like particles from SuperCDMS Soudan
• Structure Formation and Exotic Compact Objects in a Dissipative Dark Sector
• Experimental Search for Hidden Photon CDM in the eV mass range with a Dish Antenna
• Gas-rich dwarf galaxies as a new probe of dark matter interactions with ordinary matter
• An Antenna for Directional Detection of WISPy Dark Matter
• Heating up the Galaxy with Hidden Photons
• Search for the dark photon and the dark Higgs boson at Belle
• Dark photon superradiance: Electrodynamics and multimessenger signals
• Dark Photon Dark Matter in the Presence of Inhomogeneous Structure
• Searching for Light Dark Matter with the SLAC Millicharge Experiment
• Electromagnetic Signatures of Dark Photon Superradiance
• Search for a Dark Photon in Electro-Produced $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Pairs with the Heavy Photon Search Experiment at JLab
• Dark Photon Decay Beyond The Euler-Heisenberg Limit
• Light(ly)-coupled Dark Matter in the keV Range: Freeze-In and Constraints
• Light Dark Photon Dark Matter from Inflation
• Dark photon vortex formation and dynamics
• Modeling Dark Photon Oscillations in Our Inhomogeneous Universe
• Cosmological Constraint on Dark Photon from $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$
• Hidden Photon Dark Matter in the Light of XENON1T and Stellar Cooling
• The physics of Core-Collapse Supernovae: explosion mechanism and explosive nucleosynthesis
• Search for dark Higgsstrahlung in e+ e- -> mu+ mu- and missing energy events with the KLOE experiment
• Search for Dark-Matter-Nucleon Interactions with a Dark Mediator in PandaX-4T
• Effective photon mass and (dark) photon conversion in the inhomogeneous Universe
• On the health of a vector field with (R A^2)/6 coupling to gravity
• Radio-frequency Dark Photon Dark Matter across the Sun
• Axion Detection with Cavity Arrays
• Hints of dark photon dark matter from observations and hydrodynamical simulations of the low-redshift Lyman-$\alpha$ forest
• Searching for Ultralight Dark Matter Conversion in Solar Corona using Low Frequency Array Data
• Dark Photons in the Solar Basin
• Gamma-Ray Flashes from Dark Photons in Neutron Star Mergers
• Constraining hidden photons via atomic force microscope measurements and the Plimpton-Lawton experiment
• Search for a dark photon and an invisible dark Higgs boson in ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ and missing energy final states with the Belle II experiment
• Searches for long-lived dark photons at proton accelerator experiments
• Constraints on photon mass and dark photon from the Jovian magnetic field
• Shaping Dark Photon Spectral Distortions
• Searching for Prompt and Long-Lived Dark Photons in Electro-Produced $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Pairs with the Heavy Photon Search Experiment at JLab
• In-flight positron annihilation as a probe of feebly interacting particles