New stellar constraints on dark photons

TL;DR

This paper analyzes stellar production of dark photons, showing that the emission rate depends on the longitudinal modes and deriving stronger constraints on their properties from stellar cooling data.

Contribution

It corrects previous misconceptions about the emission rate dependence and provides new stellar bounds on dark photon parameters, impacting experimental searches.

Findings

Stellar bounds on dark photons are significantly strengthened for masses below 10 eV.

Emission rate is dominated by longitudinal modes when the mass is below plasma frequency.

Current experiments are excluded by the new stellar constraints.

Abstract

We consider the stellar production of vector states V within the minimal model of "dark photons". We show that when the Stuckelberg mass of the dark vector becomes smaller than plasma frequency, the emission rate is dominated by the production of the longitudinal modes of V, and scales as \kappa^2 m_V^2, where \kappa and m_V are the mixing angle with the photon and the mass of the dark state. This is in contrast with earlier erroneous claims in the literature that the emission rate decouples as the forth power of the mass. We derive ensuing constraints on the (\kappa, m_V) parameter space by calculating the cooling rates for the Sun and red giant stars. We find that stellar bounds for m_V < 10 eV are significantly strengthened, to the extent that all current "light-shining-through-wall" experiments find themselves within deeply excluded regions.