First Search for Dark Photon Dark Matter with a madmax Prototype
J. Egge, D. Leppla-Weber, S. Knirck, B. Ary dos Santos Garcia, D. Bergermann, A. Caldwell, Vipul Dabhi, C. Diaconu, Johannes Diehl, Gia Dvali, M. Ekmedžić, F. Gallo, E. Garutti, S. Heyminck, F. Hubaut, A. Ivanov, J. Jochum, P. Karst, M. Kramer, D. Kreikemeyer-Lorenzo, B. Lakić, C. Lee, A. Lindner, Janet L. Maldonado, Béla Majorovits, S. Martens, A. Martini, Akira Miyazaki, E. Öz, P. Pralavorio, G. Raffelt, A. Ringwald, J. Redondo, S. Roset, Norhan A. Salama, J. Schaffran, A. Schmidt, F. Steffen, C. Strandhagen, I. Usherov, Hua Wang, G. Wieching, Gustavo Cancelo, Martın Di Federico, Gabe Hoshino, Leandro Stefanazzi
Abstract
We report the first result from a dark photon dark matter search in the mass range from 78.62 to 83.95 μeV/c^{2} with a dielectric haloscope prototype for madmax (Magnetized Disc and Mirror Axion eXperiment). Putative dark photons would convert to detectable photons within a stack consisting of three sapphire disks and a mirror. The emitted power of this system is received by an antenna and successively digitized using a low-noise receiver. No significant signal attributable to dark photons has been observed above the expected background. Assuming unpolarized dark photon dark matter with a local density of ρ_{χ}=0.3 GeV cm^{3} we exclude a dark photon to photon mixing parameter χ>2.7×10^{-12} over the full mass range and χ>1.1×10^{-13} at a mass of 80.57 μeV/c^{2} with a 95% confidence level. This is the first physics result from a madmax prototype and exceeds previous constraints on χ in this mass range by up to almost three orders of magnitude.