Related papers: Photon Mixing in Domain Walls and the Cosmic Coinc…
A dark photon may kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon, leading to observable cosmological signatures. The mixing is resonantly enhanced when the dark photon mass matches the primordial plasma frequency, which depends sensitively…
We propose a cavity experiment to search for low mass extra U(1) gauge bosons with gauge-kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon, so-called paraphotons. The setup consists of two microwave cavities shielded from each other. In one cavity,…
I discuss different aspects of the phenomenology of hypothetical sub eV mass particles arising in the context of extensions of the standard model. I focus on a simple extension based on an additional U(1) gauge symmetry and its…
Extra dimensions have proven to be a very useful tool in constructing new physics models. In earlier work, we began investigating toy models for the 5-D analog of the kinetic mixing/vector portal scenario where the interactions of dark…
Light crossing dark domain walls that source a top form coupled to gauge Chern--Simons terms mixing visible and dark $U(1)$ gauge fields generically converts into dark photons. The effect is entirely localized on the wall and requires no…
We investigate the possibility that a (light) hidden sector extra photon receives its mass via spontaneous symmetry breaking of a hidden sector Higgs boson, the so-called hidden-Higgs. The hidden-photon can mix with the ordinary photon via…
It is argued that cosmological models that feature a flow of energy from dark energy to dark matter may solve the coincidence problem of late acceleration (i.e., "why the energy densities of both components are of the same order precisely…
We consider the Grand Unified SU(5) model with a small or vanishing cubic term in the adjoint scalar field in the potential. This gives the model an approximate or exact Z$_2$ symmetry whose breaking leads to domain walls. The simplest…
Brane world models with `large' extra dimensions with radii in the r_l ~ 0.01- 0.1 mm range and smaller ones at r_s < (1 TeV)^(-1) have the potential to solve the cosmic coincidence problem, i.e. the apparently fortuitous equality between…
Extra "hidden" U(1) gauge factors are a generic feature of string theory that is of particular phenomenological interest. They can kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon and are thereby accessible to a wide variety of astrophysical…
The coupled dark energy model provides a possible approach to mitigate the coincidence problem of cosmological standard model. Here, the coupling term is assumed as $\bar{Q}=3H\xi_x\bar{\rho}_x$, which is related to the interaction rate and…
We consider the possibility that current hints of spatial variations of the fine structure constant at high redshift, based on VLT/UVES and Keck/HIRES observations, could be caused by a biased domain wall network described by a scalar field…
Many extensions of the standard model predict the existence of hidden sectors that may contain unbroken abelian gauge groups. We argue that in the presence of quantum decoherence photons may convert into hidden photons on sufficiently long…
Hidden sector photons are a weakly interacting slim particle arising from an additional U(1) gauge symmetry predicted by many standard model extensions. We present and demonstrate a new experimental method using a single microwave cavity to…
Light extra U(1) gauge bosons, so called hidden photons, which reside in a hidden sector have attracted much attention since they are a well motivated feature of many scenarios beyond the Standard Model and furthermore could mediate the…
The possibility that the energy density of the Universe is dominated by a network of low-tension domain walls provides an alternative to the commonly discussed cosmological constant and scalar-field quintessence models of dark energy. We…
We entertain the idea that a suitable background of cold (very low momentum) pseudoscalar particles or condensate, may trigger a background that effectively generates Lorentz-invariance violation. This aether-like background induces a…
We propose an experiment to search for extra "hidden-sector" U(1) gauge bosons with gauge kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon, predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. The setup consists of a highly sensitive magnetometer…
We argue that the striking similarity between the cosmic abundances of baryons and dark matter, despite their very different astrophysical behavior, strongly motivates the scenario in which dark matter resides within a rich dark sector…
Optical precision experiments are a powerful tool to explore hidden sectors of a variety of standard-model extensions with potentially tiny couplings to photons. An important example is given by extensions involving an extra light U(1)…