Speaker
Description
String theory compactifications come with numerous U(1) factors, implying the presence of many hidden photons in the low-energy EFT. One may call this the string photoverse. We argue that, generically, these hidden photons are massless and do not couple to any light dark current such that, naively, kinetic mixing with the Standard Model is unobservable. On symmetry grounds, one thus expects the leading interactions of these superhidden photons to be dimension-6 dipole operators that couple them to quarks or leptons and the Higgs field. We show that these interactions do indeed emerge in string theory and give an estimate of their strength. Subsequently, we analyze how experiments and observations can employ this effect to place lower bounds on the string scale, which is relevant for compactifications with very large volumes. Finally, we briefly discuss how supersymmetry implies the presence of relatively light photinos and hence an accompanying photinoverse, which may be observed via renormalizable mixing effects.
| arXiv number (if applicable) | 2510.12874 |
|---|---|
| Position | PhD student |