MCTP HET BROWN BAG SEMINAR | Searching for Dark Photon with Dark Matter Detectors

Dark matter detectors built primarily to probe elastic scattering of WIMPs on nuclei can also be used to search for very light (sub keV scale) and very weakly coupled particles like a massive vector boson in the dark sector (the dark photon) very weakly coupled to our sector through a kinetic mixing with the photon. In this talk, I will first review various constraints on the parameter space of the dark photon model from astrophysics and cosmology. Then I will show that dark matter detectors can be sensitive to both the dark photons emitted from the Sun and the cold dark photons as a cold dark matter candidate.