First broadband search for fixed-polarization dark photon dark matter with GigaBREAD
Abstract
We present the first search for fixed-polarization dark photon (DP) dark matter in the 44-52μeV mass range, corresponding to 10.7-12.5GHz. GigaBREAD is a room-temperature broadband dish antenna experiment in which DP convert to ordinary photons on a cylindrical metallic emission surface and are focused onto a radio-frequency receiver. Previous searches, including GigaBREAD and several other dish antenna searches, have assumed randomly polarized DP dark matter. However, vector dark matter produced by a misalignment-like mechanism may retain an approximately fixed polarization, leading to sidereal modulation of the detector response as the Earth rotates. We reanalyze the GigaBREAD data using a polarization-matched likelihood that accounts for the time-dependent projection of a fixed DP polarization onto the detector axis. We find no evidence for a fixed-polarization DP signal and set upper limits on the kinetic mixing parameter at the level of χ∼10−12. These limits are about 20% better than a naive limit obtained by rescaling the previous GigaBREAD limit under the fixed-polarization assumption.
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BibTeX
@misc{yu2026first,
title = {{First broadband search for fixed-polarization dark photon dark matter with GigaBREAD}},
author = {Jialin Yu and Stefan Knirck and Gabe Hoshino and Rakshya Khatiwada and Alex Lapuente and David W. Miller and Andrew Sonnenschein},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.07426},
eprint = {2611.07426},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07426},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - First broadband search for fixed-polarization dark photon dark matter with GigaBREAD
AU - Jialin Yu
AU - Stefan Knirck
AU - Gabe Hoshino
AU - Rakshya Khatiwada
AU - Alex Lapuente
AU - David W. Miller
AU - Andrew Sonnenschein
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.07426
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07426
AB - We present the first search for fixed-polarization dark photon (DP) dark matter in the 44-52μeV mass range, corresponding to 10.7-12.5GHz. GigaBREAD is a room-temperature broadband dish antenna experiment in which DP convert to ordinary photons on a cylindrical metallic emission surface and are focused onto a radio-frequency receiver. Previous searches, including GigaBREAD and several other dish antenna searches, have assumed randomly polarized DP dark matter. However, vector dark matter produced by a misalignment-like mechanism may retain an approximately fixed polarization, leading to sidereal modulation of the detector response as the Earth rotates. We reanalyze the GigaBREAD data using a polarization-matched likelihood that accounts for the time-dependent projection of a fixed DP polarization onto the detector axis. We find no evidence for a fixed-polarization DP signal and set upper limits on the kinetic mixing parameter at the level of χ∼10^−12. These limits are about 20% better than a naive limit obtained by rescaling the previous GigaBREAD limit under the fixed-polarization assumption.
ER -