No Sign of Dark Photons | News of the Day

Join Hugh Ross in this breaking News of the Day episode of Stars, Cells, and God. Hugh describes a search for dark photons, a candidate for comprising a large fraction of the universe’s dark matter. The search consisted of comparing a detailed map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) with a catalog of more than 500 million galaxies.

• Dark matter makes up 24.5% of the universe.
• Probability of ordinary photons from the CMBR morphing into dark photons peaks when they pass through the plasma of electrons surrounding galaxy clusters.
• Loss of CMBR photons will be correlated with galaxy cluster positions and would make the CMBR map look more splotchy.
• The search team accounted for other effects known to distort the CMBR map.
• The search team found no evidence for dark photons. They placed an upper limit on dark photon contribution to dark matter more than 10 times lower than previous analyses.
• Future comparisons of the CMBR map with positions of denser, older galaxies will yield more stringent limits on dark photons.
• Axions remain as the leading candidate particles to comprise the majority of the universe’s dark matter.

Links & Resources

• Dark Photon Limits from Patchy Dark Screening of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• News of the Day episode: Dark Matter Particles?