Tang Zhenxing, Wang Bo, Chen Yifan, Zeng Yanjie, Li Chunlong, Yang Yuting, Feng Liwen, Sha Peng, Mi Zhenghui, Pan Weimin, Zhang Tianzong, Jin Yirong, Hao Jiankui, Lin Lin, Wang Fang, Xie Huamu, Huang Senlin, Shu Jing
School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Beijing Laser Acceleration Innovation Center, Huairou, Beijing 101400, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2024 Jul 12;133(2):021005. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.021005.
Dark photons have emerged as promising candidates for dark matter, and their search is a top priority in particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. We report the first use of a tunable niobium superconducting radio-frequency cavity for a scan search of dark photon dark matter with innovative data analysis techniques. We mechanically adjusted the resonant frequency of a cavity submerged in liquid helium at a temperature of 2 K, and scanned the dark photon mass over a frequency range of 1.37 MHz centered at 1.3 GHz. Our study leveraged the superconducting radio-frequency cavity's remarkably high quality factors of approximately 10^{10}, resulting in the most stringent constraints to date on a substantial portion of the exclusion parameter space on the kinetic mixing coefficient ε between dark photons and electromagnetic photons, yielding a value of ε<2.2×10^{-16}.
暗光子已成为暗物质的有力候选者，对其进行搜寻是粒子物理学、天体物理学和宇宙学的首要任务。我们报告了首次使用可调谐铌超导射频腔，通过创新的数据分析技术对暗光子暗物质进行扫描搜寻。我们机械地调整了浸没在2K液氦中的腔体的共振频率，并在以1.3GHz为中心的1.37MHz频率范围内扫描暗光子质量。我们的研究利用了超导射频腔约为10^10的极高品质因数，对暗光子与电磁光子之间的动力学混合系数ε的排除参数空间的很大一部分产生了迄今为止最严格的限制，得出ε<2.2×10^-16的值。
