New research study in a recent breakthrough has challenged previous assumptions related to dark matter.
Scientists previously believed that dark photons would convert into ordinary photons in the early cosmos, overheating the early plasma and leaving detectable traces.
Dark photons are a hypothetical particle beyond the Standard Model, acting as the dark universe’s version of standard photons but carrying a force other than electromagnetism.
As per a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, if the dark matter is composed of dark photons, “it would not have heated the early cosmos” like previously assumed theory.
For decades, dark matter has been an elusive concept. It remains invisible and does not interact with light. The properties of electrons, protons, neutrons interacting with the light have prompted the scientists to search beyond these particles, which are dark photons.
New computer simulations reveal that the system actually experiences intense non-linearities when it interacts with the plasma unlike the earlier calculations which showed energy conversion as a linear process.
As a result of these non-linear effects, the conversion of dark photons into standard photons shuts off after a tiny amount of energy is transferred, leading to prevention of overheating.
“These exclusions were saying the strength of dark matter had to be 10^8 times weaker than it actually can be,” team member Anson Hook at the University of Maryland said in a statement. “This paper opens up a lot of new possibilities to look for dark matter.”
This discovery also brings previously excluded search parameters back into the scene, expanding the potential “hunting ground” for dark photons and revitalizing experimental searches in physics.
“By calculating the early universe plasma correctly, experiments will probe new parameter spaces and potentially actually see something,” team member Mohamad Shalaby of the Perimeter Institute said in the statement.
