Searching Hidden-sector Photons inside a Superconducting Box

TL;DR

This paper proposes a superconducting box experiment to detect hidden-sector photons via magnetic field leakage, offering a highly sensitive method that surpasses current limits and could reveal new physics.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel static, magnetometer-based setup for hidden photon detection, improving sensitivity over existing methods by measuring field strength directly.

Findings

Projected sensitivity exceeds current astrophysical limits

Detects hidden photons in the 0.002-200 meV mass range

Enhances detection probability by measuring field strength directly

Abstract

We propose an experiment to search for extra "hidden-sector" U(1) gauge bosons with gauge kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon, predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. The setup consists of a highly sensitive magnetometer inside a superconducting shielding. This is then placed inside a strong (but sub-critical) magnetic field. In ordinary electrodynamics the magnetic field cannot permeate the superconductor and no field should register on the magnetometer. However, photon -- hidden-sector photon -- photon oscillations would allow to penetrate the superconductor and the magnetic field would "leak" into the shielded volume and register on the magnetometer. Although this setup resembles a classic ``light shining though a wall experiment'' there are two crucial differences. First, the fields are (nearly) static and the photons involved are virtual. Second, the magnetometer directly measures the field-strength and not a probability. This improves the dependence of the signal on the kinetic mixing chi (\ll 1) to chi^2 instead of chi^4. For hidden photon masses in the range 0.002-200 meV the projected sensitivity for the mixing parameter lies in the 5 10^-9 to 10^-6 range. This surpasses current astrophysical and laboratory limits by several orders of magnitude -- ample room to discover new physics.