Constraining dark photon properties with Asteroseismology

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dark photon production in stellar interiors affects red giant branch stars and demonstrates that asteroseismology can set constraints on dark photon properties, providing a new empirical method to study dark matter particles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using asteroseismology to constrain dark photon properties based on stellar evolution effects.

Findings

Dark photon production can significantly alter stellar convective zones.

Asteroseismology can set upper limits of 900 eV on dark photon mass.

Additional constraints are derived from RGB tip luminosity measurements.

Abstract

Dark photons are particles invoked in some extensions of the Standard Model which could account for at least part of the dark matter content of the Universe. It has been proposed that the production of dark photons in stellar interiors could happen at a rate that depends on both, the dark photon mass and its coupling to Standard Model particles (the kinetic mixing parameter $\chi$). In this work we aim at exploring the impact of dark photon productions in the stellar core of solar mass RGB stars during late evolutionary phases. We demonstrate that near the so-called RGB bump, dark photons production may be an energy sink for the star sufficiently significative to modify the extension of the star convective zones. We show that Asteroseismology is able to detect such variations in the structure, allowing us to predict an upper limit of $\rm 900\ eV$ and $5\times 10^{-15}$ for the mass and kinetic mixing of the dark photons, respectively. We also demonstrate that additional constraints can be derived from the fact that dark photons increase the luminosity of the RGB tip over the current observational uncertainties. This work thus paves the way for an empirical approach to deepen the study of such dark-matter particles.