Detecting Darkish Photons with Radio Telescopes
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• Physics 16, s65
A seek for uncommon interactions between darkish photons and common matter gives constraints on the properties of ultralight darkish matter.
Nationwide Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences
Lately, physicists have change into within the concept of ultralight darkish matter, which posits that darkish matter consists of extraordinarily low-mass bosons. One such candidate is the “darkish photon,” which is predicted to work together weakly with matter by coupling to common photons—a course of referred to as kinetic mixing. Now Haipeng An at Tsinghua College in China and colleagues suggest that it might be potential to detect darkish photons by way of their interactions with free electrons in radio telescopes. Utilizing information from the 5-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, An and colleagues set an higher restrict for the chance of such interactions [1].
At dish-shaped radio telescopes reminiscent of FAST, incoming radio waves excite oscillations of the free electrons within the dish, producing a mirrored sign that’s detected by the telescope’s central receiver. If darkish photons work together with free electrons within the dish by way of kinetic mixing, they too ought to generate electromagnetic waves with a frequency that is determined by the darkish photons’ mass. In precept, the signature of this interplay ought to be detectable inside the total radio sign picked up by the telescope. An and colleagues appeared for indicators of kinetic mixing amongst observations that FAST had made within the 1–1.5-GHz frequency vary. Discovering no such signature, they calculate that the dimensionless worth , which quantifies the kinetic-mixing fee, isn’t any bigger than 10−12.
Along with utilizing present information from FAST, the researchers projected sensitivities for dark-photon detection utilizing the Low-Frequency Array in Europe and the forthcoming Sq. Kilometre Array in Australia and South Africa. Subsequent, they intend to research information from space-based radio telescopes, that are delicate to dark-photon-induced alerts at frequencies beneath these accessible to terrestrial radio telescopes.
–Allison Gasparini
Allison Gasparini is a contract science author based mostly in Santa Cruz, CA.
References
- H. An et al., “Direct detection of darkish photon darkish matter utilizing radio telescopes,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 181001 (2023).
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