Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

We consider a model of sub-GeV dark matter whose interaction with the Standard Model is mediated by a new vector boson (the dark photon) which couples kinetically to the photon. We describe the possibility of constraining such a model using a superfluid He-4 detector, by means of an effective theory...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Andrea Caputo, Angelo Esposito, Emma Geoffray, Antonio D. Polosa, Sichun Sun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2020-03-01
Series:Physics Letters B
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269320300629
Description
Summary:We consider a model of sub-GeV dark matter whose interaction with the Standard Model is mediated by a new vector boson (the dark photon) which couples kinetically to the photon. We describe the possibility of constraining such a model using a superfluid He-4 detector, by means of an effective theory for the description of the superfluid phonon. We find that such a detector could provide bounds that are competitive with other direct detection experiments only for ultralight vector mediator, in agreement with previous studies. As a byproduct we also present, for the first time, the low-energy effective field theory for the interaction between photons and phonons. Keywords: Light dark matter, Effective theory, Helium, Phonon, Dark photon
ISSN:0370-2693