New insights into dark matter emerge as researchers explore ‘dark matter’ photon‘ hypothesis and challenges the standard model hypothesis.
An international research team led by experts from the University of Adelaide has discovered further clues that offer insight into the nature of dark matter.
“Dark matter makes up 84 per cent of the matter in the universe, but we know very little about it,” says Professor Anthony Thomas, Senior Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide.
“The existence of dark matter is firmly established from gravitational interactions, but despite the best efforts of physicists around the world, its exact nature remains elusive.”
“The key to understanding this mystery may lie in dark photons, theoretical giant particles that act as a gateway between the dark sector of particles and normal matter.”
“Our study shows that the dark photon hypothesis is preferred over the Standard Model hypothesis by a significance of 6.5 sigma, providing evidence for particle discovery.” — Professor Anthony Thomas
Dark photons and their importance
The ordinary matter that makes up us and our physical world is far less abundant than dark matter, and there is five times more dark matter than ordinary matter. Learning more about dark matter is one of the biggest challenges for physicists around the world.
Dark photons are hypothetical hidden sector particles that have been proposed as force carriers similar to electromagnetic photons, but potentially related to dark matter. Testing existing theories about dark matter is a challenge for scientists including Professor Thomas, a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Center of Excellence, and colleagues Professor Martin White, Dr Wangon and Professor Nicholas Huntsmith. This is one of the approaches taken by et al. Dark matter particle physicists continue to work to gain further clues about this elusive, but highly important substance.
Insights from particle collisions
“Our latest research examines the potential impact that dark photons can have on the entire suite of experimental results from deep inelastic scattering processes,” Professor Thomas said.
Analysis of the byproducts of collisions of particles accelerated to very high energies gives scientists good evidence about the structure of the subatomic world and the natural laws that govern it.
In particle physics, deep inelastic scattering is the name given to the process used to probe the interior of hadrons (particularly baryons such as protons and neutrons) using electrons, muons, and neutrinos.
“We utilized the state-of-the-art Jefferson Institute Angular Momentum (JAM) parton distribution function global analysis framework and modified the underlying theory to account for the possibility of dark photons,” Professor Thomas said. I did.
“Our study shows that the dark photon hypothesis is preferred over the Standard Model hypothesis by a significance of 6.5 sigma, which provides evidence for a particle discovery.”
The team, made up of scientists from the University of Adelaide and colleagues from the Jefferson Institute in Virginia, USA, will share their findings with High Energy Physics Journal.
Reference: “Global QCD Analysis and Dark Photons” by NT Hunt-Smith, W. Melnitchouk, N.Sato, AW Thomas, XG Wang, and MJ White on behalf of the Jefferson Lab Angular Momentum (JAM) Collaboration, 2023. September 15th, High Energy Physics Journal.
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP09(2023)096