Terrestrial detection of hidden vectors produced by solar nuclear reactions
Abstract
Solar nuclear reactions can occasionally produce sub-MeV elusive beyond the Standard Model particles that escape the solar interior without further interactions. This study focuses on massive spin-one particles. We construct the general theoretical framework and identify two crucial mixing sources involving the photon, which facilitate communication between the hidden and visible sectors: kinetic mixing with the photon, and plasma-induced mixing due to thermal electron loops. For both cases, we focus on the second stage of the solar proton-proton chain and evaluate the fluxes of monochromatic 5.49~MeV hidden vectors produced by the nuclear reaction. We then investigate their terrestrial detection via Compton-like scatterings. The incoming fluxes are polarized, and we evaluate the cross sections for Compton-like scatterings for transverse and longitudinal vectors. Finally, we apply this framework to a concrete case by investigating the sensitivity of the forthcoming Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment and identifying parameter space where current terrestrial bounds will be improved.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2305.14420,
title = {Terrestrial detection of hidden vectors produced by solar nuclear reactions},
author = {Francesco D'Eramo and Giuseppe Lucente and Newton Nath and Seokhoon Yun},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14420},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
40 pages, 9 figures; v2: numerical mistake in the analysis corrected, updated results and discussion; version published in JHEP