- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Relaxing constraints on a broad dark photon

J. R. Felix, A. W. Thomas, and X. G. Wang

  • CSSM and ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia

PDF

Phys. Rev. D 112, 035011 – Published 8 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cv86-8nx3

Abstract

We revisit the exclusion constraints on the parameters of a narrow dark photon set by direct experimental searches. We investigate how a dark photon with a larger decay width impacts these limits, in particular, in the case where the dark photon also decays into light dark matter. As an example, taking the upper limits on the mixing parameter, ε, reported by the CMS Collaboration, we find that they could be significantly relaxed. Indeed, even a very modest coupling of the dark photon to dark matter can lead to an increase in the bound on the mixing parameter by an order of magnitude.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (42)

  1. B. Abi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 141801 (2021).
  2. D. P. Aguillard et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 161802 (2023).
  3. T. Aaltonen et al. (CDF Collaboration), Science 376, 170 (2022).
  4. E. Cortina Gil et al. (NA62 Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2025) 191.
  5. J. K. Ahn et al. (KOTO Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 081802 (2025).
  6. I. Adachi et al. (Belle-II Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 109, 112006 (2024).
  7. P. Fayet, Phys. Lett. 95B, 285 (1980).
  8. P. Fayet, Nucl. Phys. B187, 184 (1981).
  9. B. Holdom, Phys. Lett. B 178, 65 (1986).
  10. L. B. Okun, Sov. Phys. JETP 56, 502 (1982), https://inspirehep.net/literature/177918.
  11. P. Fayet, Nucl. Phys. B347, 743 (1990).
  12. A. Leike, Phys. Rep. 317, 143 (1999).
  13. P. Langacker, Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 1199 (2009).
  14. J. P. Lees et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 201801 (2014).
  15. J. P. Lees et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 131804 (2017).
  16. R. Aaij et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 041801 (2020).
  17. A. M. Sirunyan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 131802 (2020).
  18. D. Banerjee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 121801 (2019).
  19. Y. M. Andreev et al., Phys. Rev. D 104, L091701 (2021).
  20. A. Hook, E. Izaguirre, and J. G. Wacker, Adv. High Energy Phys. 2011, 859762 (2011).
  21. D. Curtin, R. Essig, S. Gori, and J. Shelton, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2015) 157.
  22. B. M. Loizos, X. G. Wang, A. W. Thomas, M. J. White, and A. G. Williams, J. Phys. G 51, 075002 (2024).
  23. G. D. Kribs, D. McKeen, and N. Raj, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 011801 (2021).
  24. A. W. Thomas, X. G. Wang, and A. G. Williams, Phys. Rev. D 105, L031901 (2022).
  25. B. Yan, Phys. Lett. B 833, 137384 (2022).
  26. N. T. Hunt-Smith, W. Melnitchouk, N. Sato, A. W. Thomas, X. G. Wang, and M. J. White, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2023) 096.
  27. A. M. Abdullahi, M. Hostert, D. Massaro, and S. Pascoli, Phys. Rev. D 108, 015032 (2023).
  28. F. S. Queiroz, J. Zamora-Saa, R. C. Silva, and Y. M. Oviedo-Torres, Phys. Rev. D 111, 095021 (2025).
  29. P. Galison and A. Manohar, Phys. Lett. 136B, 279 (1984).
  30. E. C. G. Stueckelberg, Helv. Phys. Acta 11, 225 (1938).
  31. B. Kors and P. Nath, Phys. Lett. B 586, 366 (2004).
  32. E. Izaguirre, G. Krnjaic, P. Schuster, and N. Toro, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 251301 (2015).
  33. X. G. Wang and A. W. Thomas, Phys. Lett. B 866, 139573 (2025).
  34. R. N. Cahn, Phys. Rev. D 36, 2666 (1987); 40, 922(E) (1989).
  35. I. R. Kenyon, Rep. Prog. Phys. 45, 1261 (1982).
  36. R. A. Kycia and S. Jadach, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 463, 1040 (2018).
  37. S. Jadach and R. A. Kycia, Phys. Lett. B 755, 58 (2016).
  38. A. M. Sirunyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2019) 059.
  39. S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024).
  40. R. D. Ball et al. (NNPDF Collaboration), Eur. Phys. J. C 82, 428 (2022).
  41. A. Filippi and M. De Napoli, Rev. Phys. 5, 100042 (2020).
  42. G. Krnjaic, arXiv:2505.04626.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 112, 035011– Published 8 August, 2025
  • Received 12 May 2025
  • Accepted 22 July 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation