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Dark photons in the radio sky. I. Resonant conversions in halos

Ethan Baker* and Hongwan Liu†

  • *Contact author: ebaker@bu.edu
  • †Contact author: hongwan@bu.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043013 – Published 25 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zpdq-b6t6

Abstract

Mixing between dark photons and visible photons leads to substantial anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background due to resonant conversions of visible photons into dark photons in baryonic matter found in dark matter halos. In this work, we forecast the sensitivity of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) to this signal. We find that SKA could be the first experiment to discover dark photons with a mass between 10−13 and 5×10−12  eV and kinetic mixing parameter ε as small as ∼10−8 by cross-correlating their data with a low-redshift galaxy survey, potentially improving on the sensitivity from a similar analysis using Planck data by a factor of 4 in ε. This improvement is largely due to an enhancement of the signal at low frequencies and the unique experimental advantages of radio telescopes such as small beam sizes.

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Dark photons in the radio sky. II. Resonant conversions in the intergalactic medium

Ethan Baker and Hongwan Liu
Phys. Rev. D 114, 043014 (2026)

Article Text

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043013– Published 25 August, 2026
  • Received 19 November 2025
  • Accepted 6 July 2026
Article part of CHORUS
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