Improved Dark Photon Sensitivity from a Superconducting-Radio-Frequency-Cavity Experiment

Physical Review Letters 2026 Open access

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Authors: Saarik Kalia, Zhen Liu, Bianca Giaccone, Oleksandr Melnychuk, Roman Pilipenko, Asher Berlin, Anson Hook, Sergey A. Belomestnykh, Crispin Contreras-Martinez, D. Frolov, Timergali N. Khabiboulline, Yuriy Pischalnikov
+6 more Sam Posen, Oleg Pronitchev, Vyacheslav P. Yakovlev, Anna Grassellino, Roni Harnik, Alexander V. Romanenko
DOI: 10.1103/p7r3-c15d
Cited by: 0
References: 27

Abstract

We report the refined dark-photon exclusion bound from Dark SRF's pathfinder run. Our new result is driven by improved theoretical modeling of frequency instability in high-quality resonant experiments. Our analysis leads to a constraint that is an order of magnitude stronger than previously reported (corresponding to a signal-to-noise ratio that is 4 orders of magnitude larger). This result represents the world-leading constraint on non-dark-matter dark photons over a wide range of masses below 6 μeV and translates to the best laboratory-based limit on the photon mass m_{γ}

Fields of Study & Subjects

Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Publication details

Journal / source
Physical Review Letters
Volume
136
Issue
11
Pages
111802–111802
Publication date
24 February 2026
Language
EN