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Andreas Ringwald

Publications and source records attributed to Andreas Ringwald.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
arXiv2010

New ALPS Results on Hidden-Sector Lightweights

The ALPS collaboration runs a "Light Shining through a Wall" (LSW) experiment to search for photon oscillations into "Weakly Interacting Sub-eV Particles" (WISPs) often predicted by extensions of the Standard Model. The experiment is set up around a superconducting HERA dipole magnet at the site of DESY. Due to several upgrades of the experiment we are able to place limits on the probability of photon-WISP-photon conversions of a few 10^{-25}. These limits result in today's most stringent laboratory constraints on the existence of low mass axion-like particles, hidden photons and minicharged particles.

hep-ex↗
arXiv2010

Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Generation of Photon Regeneration Experiments

Photon regeneration experiments searching for signatures of oscillations of photons into hypothetical very weakly interacting ultra-light particles, such as axions, axion-like and hidden-sector particles, have improved their sensitivity considerably in recent years. Important progress in laser and detector technology as well as recycling of available magnets from accelerators may allow a big further step in sensitivity such that, for the first time, laser light shining through a wall experiments will explore territory in parameter space that has not been excluded yet by astrophysics and cosmology. We review these challenges and opportunities for the next generation experiments.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Light hidden-sector U(1)s in string compactifications

We review the case for light U(1) gauge bosons in the hidden-sector of heterotic and type II string compactifications, present estimates of the size of their kinetic mixing with the visible-sector hypercharge U(1), and discuss their possibly very interesting phenomenological consequences in particle physics and cosmology.

hep-th↗
arXiv2010

The Low-Energy Frontier of Particle Physics

Most embeddings of the Standard Model into a more unified theory, in particular the ones based on supergravity or superstrings, predict the existence of a hidden sector of particles which have only very weak interactions with the visible sector Standard Model particles. Some of these exotic particle candidates (such as e.g. "axions", "axion-like particles" and "hidden U(1) gauge bosons") may be very light, with masses in the sub-eV range, and have very weak interactions with photons. Correspondingly, these very weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) may lead to observable effects in experiments (as well as in astrophysical and cosmological observations) searching for light shining through a wall, for changes in laser polarisation, for non-linear processes in large electromagnetic fields and for deviations from Coulomb's law. We present the physics case and a status report of this emerging low-energy frontier of fundamental physics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Naturally Light Hidden Photons in LARGE Volume String Compactifications

Extra "hidden" U(1) gauge factors are a generic feature of string theory that is of particular phenomenological interest. They can kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon and are thereby accessible to a wide variety of astrophysical and cosmological observations and laboratory experiments. In this paper we investigate the masses and the kinetic mixing of hidden U(1)s in LARGE volume compactifications of string theory. We find that in these scenarios the hidden photons can be naturally light and that their kinetic mixing with the ordinary electromagnetic photon can be of a size interesting for near future experiments and observations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Resonant laser power build-up in ALPS -- a "light-shining-through-walls" experiment

The ALPS collaboration runs a light-shining-through-walls (LSW) experiment to search for photon oscillations into "weakly interacting sub-eV particles" (WISPs) inside of a superconducting HERA dipole magnet at the site of DESY. In this paper we report on the first successful integration of a large-scale optical cavity to boost the available power for WISP production in this type of experiments. The key elements are a frequency tunable narrow line-width continuous wave laser acting as the primary light source and an electronic feed-back control loop to stabilize the power build-up. We describe and characterize our apparatus and demonstrate the data analysis procedures on the basis of a brief exemplary run.

physics.ins-det↗
arXiv2009

Hidden Laser Communications Through Matter -An application of meV-scale hidden photons-

Currently, there are a number of light-shining-through-walls experiments searching for hidden photons -- light, sub-eV-scale, abelian gauge bosons beyond the standard model which mix kinetically with the standard photon. We show that in the case that one of these experiments finds evidence for hidden photons, laser communications through matter, using methods from free-space optics, can be realized in the very near future, with a channel capacity of more than 1 bit per second, for a distance up to the Earth's diamater.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Prospects for the direct detection of the cosmic neutrino background

The existence of a cosmic neutrino background -- the analogue of the cosmic microwave background -- is a fundamental prediction of standard big bang cosmology. Up to now, the observational evidence for its existence is rather indirect and rests entirely on cosmological observations of, e.g., the light elemental abundances, the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, and the large scale distribution of matter. Here, we review more direct, weak interaction based detection techniques for the cosmic neutrino background in the present epoch and in our local neighbourhood. We show that, with current technology, all proposals are still off by some orders of magnitude in sensitivity to lead to a guaranteed detection of the relic neutrinos. The most promising laboratory search, based on neutrino capture on beta decaying nuclei, may be done in future experiments designed to measure the neutrino mass through decay kinematics.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2008

The Discovery Potential of Laser Polarization Experiments

Currently, a number of experiments are searching for vacuum magnetic birefringence and dichroism, i.e. for dispersive and absorptive features in the propagation of polarized light along a transverse magnetic field in vacuum. In this note we calculate the Standard Model contributions to these signatures, thereby illuminating the discovery potential of such experiments in the search for new physics. We discuss the three main sources for a Standard Model contribution to a dichroism signal: photon splitting, neutrino pair production and production of gravitons.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

From Axions to Other WISPs

We illustrate, taking a top-down point of view, how axions and other very weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) arise in the course of compactification of the extra spatial dimensions in string/M-theory.

hep-th↗
arXiv2008

Probing Hidden Sector Photons through the Higgs Window

We investigate the possibility that a (light) hidden sector extra photon receives its mass via spontaneous symmetry breaking of a hidden sector Higgs boson, the so-called hidden-Higgs. The hidden-photon can mix with the ordinary photon via a gauge kinetic mixing term. The hidden-Higgs can couple to the Standard Model Higgs via a renormalizable quartic term - sometimes called the Higgs Portal. We discuss the implications of this light hidden-Higgs in the context of laser polarization and light-shining-through-the-wall experiments as well as cosmological, astrophysical, and non-Newtonian force measurements. For hidden-photons receiving their mass from a hidden-Higgs we find in the small mass regime significantly stronger bounds than the bounds on massive hidden sector photons alone.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Signatures of a hidden cosmic microwave background

If there is a hidden photon -- i.e. a light abelian gauge boson in the hidden sector -- its kinetic mixing with the standard photon can produce a hidden cosmic microwave background (hCMB). For meV masses, resonant photon-hidden photon oscillations happen after nucleosynthesis (BBN) but before CMB decoupling, increasing the effective number of neutrinos but also the baryon to photon ratio. The current agreement between BBN and CMB data provides new constraints on the kinetic mixing. However, if one includes Lyman-alpha data, an effective number of neutrinos higher than 3 is preferred. It is tempting to interpret this effect in terms of the hCMB. Interestingly, the required parameters will be tested in the near future by laboratory experiments.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2008

Illuminating the Hidden Sector of String Theory by Shining Light through a Magnetic Field

Many models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict minicharged particles to which current and near future low-energy experiments are highly sensitive. Such minicharges arise generically from kinetic-mixing in theories containing at least two U(1) gauge factors. Here, we point out that the required multiple U(1) factors, the size of kinetic-mixing, and suitable matter representations to allow for a detection in the near future occur naturally in the context of string theory embeddings of the Standard Model. A detection of minicharged particles in a low energy experiment would likely be a signal of an underlying string theory and may provide a means of testing it.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

A Cavity Experiment to Search for Hidden Sector Photons

We propose a cavity experiment to search for low mass extra U(1) gauge bosons with gauge-kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon, so-called paraphotons. The setup consists of two microwave cavities shielded from each other. In one cavity, paraphotons are produced via photon-paraphoton oscillations. The second, resonant, cavity is then driven by the paraphotons that permeate the shielding and reconvert into photons. This setup resembles the classic ``light shining through a wall'' setup. However, the high quality factors achievable for microwave cavities and the good sensitivity of microwave detectors allow for a projected sensitivity for photon-paraphoton mixing of the order of χ~10^{-12} to 10^{-8}, for paraphotons with masses in the μeV to meV range -- exceeding the current laboratory- and astrophysics-based limits by several orders of magnitude. Therefore, this experiment bears significant discovery potential for hidden sector physics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

Particle Interpretations of the PVLAS Data

Recently the PVLAS collaboration reported the observation of a rotation of linearly polarized laser light induced by a transverse magnetic field -- a signal being unexpected within standard QED. In this review, we emphasize two mechanisms which have been proposed to explain this result: production of a single light neutral spin-zero particle or pair production of light minicharged particles. We discuss a class of models, involving, in addition to our familiar ``visible'' photon, further light ``hidden paraphotons'', which mix kinematically with the visible one, and further light paracharged particles. In these models, very strong astrophysical and cosmological bounds on the weakly interacting light particles mentioned above can be evaded. In the upcoming year, a number of decisive laboratory based tests of the particle interpretation of the PVLAS anomaly will be done. More generally, such experiments, exploiting high fluxes of low-energy photons and/or large electromagnetic fields, will dig into previously unconstrained parameter space of the above mentioned models.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

Production and Detection of Axion-Like Particles in a HERA Dipole Magnet - Letter-of-Intent for the ALPS experiment -

Recently, the PVLAS collaboration has reported evidence for an anomalous rotation of the polarization of light in vacuum in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. This may be explained through the production of a new light spin-zero (axion-like) neutral particle coupled to two photons. In this letter-of-intent, we propose to test this hypothesis by setting up a photon regeneration experiment which exploits the photon beam of a high-power infrared laser, sent along the transverse magnetic field of a superconducting HERA dipole magnet. The proposed ALPS (Axion-Like Particle Search) experiment offers a window of opportunity for a rapid firm establishment or exclusion of the axion-like particle interpretation of the anomaly published by PVALS. It will also allow for the measurement of mass, parity, and coupling strength of this particle. [The experiment has been approved by the DESY directorate on January 11, 2007.]

hep-ex↗