Oscillations to hidden photon in reactor and accelerator experiments

Abstract

Possible connection between visible and hidden Worlds of particle physics is provided by the vector portal interaction, that is kinetic mixing between ordinary (visible) and hidden photons. If sufficiently light, the hidden photon can be produced (and absorbed) by ordinary matter in a Compton-like processes, which naively are insensitive to the hidden photon mass. In this talk we study the evolution of the two vector boson system, which exhibits oscillations similar to the well-known neutrino oscillations. We show that, provided by the environment matter, this quantum phenomenon significantly suppresses the hidden photon production in particle collisions. The ordinary photon is effectively massive in the media. The suppression is important for hidden photon lighter than photon in the corresponding media (detector, beam dump material etc) and grows with decrease of the hidden photon mass making all the accelerator and reactor experiments absolutely insensitive to the models with light photons. The dedicated study is required for the case of the degenerate photon and hidden photon, when, on the contrary, the hidden photon production can be amplified with respect to the Compton process.