The hypothetical new particles could potentially account for the observations made by the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. According to a new study published in Physical Review Letters, it is possible that dark matter is composed of ultralight dark photons that may have p
and Tel Aviv University), Hongwan Liu , and Matteo Viel explain. “Unlike the photon, however, they can have mass. In particular, the ultralight dark photon—with a mass as small as twenty orders of magnitude less than that of the electron—is a good candidate for dark matter.”
Dark photons and regular photons are also expected to mix like the different types of neutrinos, allowing ultralight dark photon dark matter to convert into low-frequency photons. These photons will heat up the cosmic web but, unlike other heating mechanisms, based on astrophysical processes, such as star formation and galactic winds, this heating process is more diffuse and efficient also in regions that are not very dense.
The work identified the mass and mixing of the dark photon with the Standard Model photon required to reconcile the discrepancy between observations and simulation; this effort could drive further theoretical and observational investigations in order to explore the exciting possibility that the dark photon could constitute the dark matter.
Reference: “Comparison of Low-Redshift Lyman-α Forest Observations to Hydrodynamical Simulations with Dark Photon Dark Matter” by James S. Bolton, Andrea Caputo, Hongwan Liu and Matteo Viel, 18 November 2022,
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