Improved Dark Photon Sensitivity from a Superconducting-Radio-Frequency-Cavity Experiment
We report the refined dark-photon exclusion bound from Dark SRF’s pathfinder run. Our new result is driven by improved theoretical modeling of frequency instability in high-quality resonant experiments. Our analysis leads to a constraint that is an order of magnitude stronger than previously reported (corresponding to a signal-to-noise ratio that is 4 orders of magnitude larger). This result represents the world-leading constraint on non-dark-matter dark photons over a wide range of masses below <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:mn>6</a:mn> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mi mathvariant="normal">μ</a:mi> <a:mi>eV</a:mi> </a:math> and translates to the best laboratory-based limit on the photon mass <d:math xmlns:d="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <d:mrow> <d:msub> <d:mrow> <d:mi>m</d:mi> </d:mrow> <d:mrow> <d:mi>γ</d:mi> </d:mrow> </d:msub> <d:mo><</d:mo> <d:mn>2.9</d:mn> <d:mo>×</d:mo> <d:msup> <d:mrow> <d:mn>10</d:mn> </d:mrow> <d:mrow> <d:mo>−</d:mo> <d:mn>48</d:mn> </d:mrow> </d:msup> <d:mtext> </d:mtext> <d:mtext> </d:mtext> <d:mi mathvariant="normal">g</d:mi> </d:mrow> </d:math> .
Authors
- Sam Posen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-306X)
- D. Frolov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5002-8341)
- Anna Grassellino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3985-8296)
- Alexander Romanenko (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1378-0870)
- Bianca Giaccone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7275-8465)
- Crispin Contreras-Martinez
- Roni Harnik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7293-7175)
- Yuriy Pischalnikov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9353-9029)
- T. Khabiboulline
- Oleg Pronitchev
- Oleksandr Melnychuk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2089-8685)
- Saarik Kalia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7362-6501)
- S. Belomestnykh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7822-8169)
- Asher Berlin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1156-1482)
- Roman Pilipenko (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6323-0354)
- Zhen Liu
- Vyacheslav Yakovlev (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3969-9421)
- Anson Hook
Institutions
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- University of Minnesota System (US)
- Superconducting Systems (United States) (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2026-02-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/p7r3-c15d
- Primary Topic
- Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00