SRF Cavity Searches for Dark Photon Dark Matter: First Scan Results

Author:

Zhenxing Tang, Bo Wang, Yifan Chen, Yanjie Zeng, Chunlong Li, Yuting Yang, Liwen Feng, Peng Sha, Zhenghui Mi, Weimin Pan, Tianzong Zhang, Yirong Jin, Jiankui Hao, Lin Lin, Fang Wang, Huamu Xie, Senlin Huang, Jing Shu

Keyword:

High Energy Physics - Experiment, High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex), Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO), High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph), Accelerator Physics (physics.acc-ph)

journal:

date:

2023-05-15 16:00:00

Abstract

We present the first use of a tunable superconducting radio frequency cavity to perform a scan search for dark photon dark matter with novel data analysis strategies. We mechanically tuned the resonant frequency of a cavity embedded in the liquid helium with a temperature of $2$ K, scanning the dark photon mass over a frequency range of $1.37$ MHz centered at $1.3$ GHz. By exploiting the superconducting radio frequency cavity's considerably high quality factors of approximately $10^{10}$, our results demonstrate the most stringent constraints to date on a substantial portion of the exclusion parameter space, particularly concerning the kinetic mixing coefficient between dark photons and electromagnetic photons $\epsilon$, yielding a value of $\epsilon < 2.2 \times 10^{-16}$.

PDF: SRF Cavity Searches for Dark Photon Dark Matter: First Scan Results.pdf