Mainz 2014 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 111: Theoretische Astroteilchenphysik und Kosmologie
T 111.1: Talk
Thursday, March 27, 2014, 16:45–17:00, P101
Dark Radiation constraints on minicharged particles in models with a hidden photon — Javier Redondo1,2 and •Hendrik Vogel1 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Munich, Germany — 2Arnold Sommerfeld Center - LMU, Munich, Germany
We compute the thermalization of a hidden sector consisting of minicharged particles (MCPs) and massless hidden photons in the early Universe. The precise measurement of the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background by Planck and the relic abundance of light nuclei produced during big bang nucleosynthesis constrain the amount of dark radiation of this hidden sector through the effective number of neutrino species, Neff. In this talk we present accurate predictions of dark radiation in the strongly and weakly coupled regime for a wide range of model parameters. We give the value of Neff for MCP masses between ∼ 100 keV and 10 GeV and minicharges in the range 10−11−0.1. Our results can be used to put bounds on MCPs from the current data and it is also a valuable indicator for future experimental searches, should the hint for dark radiation manifest itself in the next release of Planck’s data.