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Follow-up search for a tentative dark photon signal near 19.5  μeV using the ORGAN-Q infrastructure

Aaron P. Quiskamp, Graeme R. Flower, Maxim Goryachev, and Michael E. Tobar

Ben T. McAllister*

  • *Contact author: bmcallister@swin.edu.au
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 012007 – Published 13 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2ydp-2gz9

Abstract

A recent independent dark photon (DP) focused reanalysis of existing data from the TASEH axion haloscope experiment reported a tentative DP dark matter signal with local significance ∼4.7σ at a frequency f≈4.71  GHz, corresponding to mX≈19.5  μeV and kinetic mixing ϵ∼6.5×10−15. Motivated by this report, we performed a dedicated, narrowband follow-up experiment to confirm or refute the signal with a cryogenic microwave cavity operated without a magnetic field, leveraging the ORGAN-Q dilution refrigeration and receiver chain. Scanning a window centered on the reported frequency over a live time of Tint∼13  days, we find no excess consistent with a dark photon signal as reported, and set a 95% CL of ϵ≤5.04×10−15 in a narrow mass range around ∼19.5  μeV, excluding a signal of the strength and frequency reported to 99.92% confidence. We discuss the experiment and present the exclusion limits.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 012007– Published 13 January, 2026
  • Received 17 October 2025
  • Accepted 17 December 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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