Many extensions of the Standard Model require the existence of a "hidden" sector. We consider settings where the hidden sector in the infrared contains a U(1) gauge factor with magnetic monopoles, for instance 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles of an underlying non-abelian gauge group. In the presence of CP violation these monopoles acquire an electric charge in the hidden sector due to the Witten effect. We show that quite generally they also acquire (small) electric charges under the visible electromagnetic gauge group. This is a result of "magnetic mixing" which, as we show, often arises as a natural partner of kinetic mixing. Both kinetic and magnetic mixing are naturally induced radiatively even if the low-energy U(1)s arise from a single non-abelian gauge group. We argue that the hidden sector monopoles can be light and their electric minicharges could thus be testable in current and near future low-energy experiments.
Minicharged particles (MCPs) arise naturally in extensions of the Standard Model with hidden sector gauge groups. Many such extensions also contain magnetic monopoles. For models containing both monopoles and MCPs, we clarify the role of the Dirac charge quantization condition in restricting the possible charges. We also show that monopoles of the hidden sector may manifest themselves as MCPs, by a generalization of the Witten effect, which we call "magnetic mixing".
Minicharged particles arise naturally in extensions of the Standard Model with a kinetic mixing term between the ordinary electromagnetic U(1) and an extra "hidden sector" U(1). In this note we study the compatibility of these particles with the existence of magnetic monopoles. We find that angular momentum quantization allows only certain combinations of ordinary and hidden monopole charge. Using the example where one of the U(1)s originates from a spontaneously broken SU(2), we demonstrate that exactly the allowed types of monopoles arise as 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles.
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 …
We show that gauge coupling unification is realized with a greater accuracy in the presence of a massless hidden photon which has a large kinetic mixing with hypercharge. We solve the renormalization group equations at two-loop level and find that the GUT unification scale is around $10^{16.5}$ GeV which sufficiently suppresses the proton decay rate, and that the unification is essentially determined by the kinetic mixing only, and it is rather insensitive to the hidden gauge coupling or the presence of vector-like matter fields charged under U(1)$_H$ and/or SU(5). Matter fields charged under …
Optical precision experiments are a powerful tool to explore hidden sectors of a variety of standard-model extensions with potentially tiny couplings to photons. An important example is given by extensions involving an extra light U(1) gauge degree of freedom, so-called paraphotons, with gauge-kinetic mixing with the normal photon. These models naturally give rise to minicharged particles which can be searched for with optical experiments. In this paper, we study the effects of paraphotons in such experiments. We describe in detail the role of a magnetic field for photon-paraphoton oscillation…
We consider an extension of the Standard Model that was proposed recently by one of the current authors (PQH), which admits magnetic monopoles with a mass of order of a few TeV. We impose, in addition to topological quantization in the SU(2) sector of the model, the Dirac Quantization Condition (DQC) required for consistency of the quantum theory of a charged electron in the presence of the monopole. This leads to the prediction ${\rm sin}^2θ_W = 1/4$, where $θ_W$ is the weak mixing angle at the energy scale set by the monopole mass. A leading-order renormalization-group analysis yields the va…
We discuss how the topological defects in the dark sector affect the Standard Model sector when the dark photon has a kinetic mixing with the QED photon. In particular, we consider the dark photon appearing in the successive gauge symmetry breaking, $\mathrm{SU}(2)\to \mathrm{U}(1) \to \mathbb{Z}_2$, where the remaining $\mathbb{Z}_2$ is the center of $\mathrm{SU(2)}$. In this model, the monopole is trapped into the cosmic strings and forms the so-called bead solution. As we will discuss, the dark cosmic string induces the QED magnetic flux inside the dark string through the kinetic mixing. Th…
Embeddings of the standard model in type II string theory typically contain a variety of U(1) gauge factors arising from D-branes in the bulk. In general, there is no reason why only one of these - the one corresponding to weak hypercharge - should be massless. Observations require that standard model particles must be neutral (or have an extremely small charge) under additional massless U(1)s, i.e. the latter have to belong to a so called hidden sector. The exchange of heavy messengers, however, can lead to a kinetic mixing between the hypercharge and the hidden-sector U(1)s, that is testable…
We suggest that dark matter may be partially constituted by a dilute 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles gas. We reach this conclusion by using the Georgi-Glashow model coupled to a dual kinetic mixing term $ F{\tilde {\cal G}}$ where $F$ is the electromagnetic field and ${\cal G}$ the 't Hooft tensor. We show that these monopoles carry both (Maxwell) electric and (Georgi-Glashow) magnetic charges and the electric charge quantization condition is modified in terms of a dimensionless real parameter. This parameter could be determined from milli-charged particle experiments.
We show how in the standard electroweak model three $SU(2)_L$ Nambu monopoles, each carrying electromagnetic (EM) and Z- magnetic fluxes, can merge (through Z-strings) with a single $U(1)_Y$ Dirac monopole to yield a composite monopole that only carries EM magnetic flux. Compatibility with the Dirac quantization condition requires this composite monopole to carry six quanta ($12 π/e$) of magnetic charge, independent of the electroweak mixing angle $θ_w$. The Dirac monopole is not regular at the origin and the energy of the composite monopole is therefore divergent. We discuss how this problem …
We explore kinetic mixing between two Abelian gauge theories that have both electric and magnetic charges. When one of the photons becomes massive, novel effects arise in the low-energy effective theory, including the failure of Dirac charge quantization as particles from one sector obtain parametrically small couplings to the photon of the other. We maintain a manifest SL(2,Z) duality throughout our analysis, which is the diagonal subgroup of the dualities of the two un-mixed gauge theories.
The long-sought "magnetic monopole" appears to be -- not a fermion distinct from the electrons and quarks -- but a charge carried by the known electrons and the quarks themselves. Similarly to the "Z" charge of electroweak theory, however, this magnetic monopole charge only manifests its interactions at sufficiently-high energy, and its interactions may not respect chiral symmetry. Calculated cross-section enhancements from magnetic monopole interactions at s=M_z^2 reduce the observed weak mixing angle for e e-bar --> mu mu-bar decays by about delta sin^2 theta_W = -.0030 relative to v v-bar -…
We develop a scenario whereby monopoles in a hidden sector yield a decaying dark matter candidate of interest for the PAMELA and FERMI $e^\pm$ excesses. The monopoles are not completely hidden due to a very small kinetic mixing and a hidden photon mass. The latter also causes the monopoles and anti-monopoles to be connected by strings. The resulting long-lived objects eventually decay to hidden photons which tend to escape galactic cores before decaying. The mass scales are those of the hidden photon ($\approx 500$ MeV), the monopole ($\approx 3$ TeV) and the mixing scale (close to the Planck …
A general procedure to describe the coupling $U_A (1) \times U_B (1)$ between antisymmetric gauge fields is proposed. For vector gauge theories the inclusion of magnetic mixing in the hidden sector induces millicharges -- in principle -- observable. We extend the analysis to antisymmetric fields and the extension to higher order monopoles is discussed. A modification of the model discussed in \cite{Ibarra} with massless antisymmetric fields as dark matter is also considered and the total cross section ratio are found and discussed.
Linear equivalence is a criterion that compares submanifolds in the same homology class. We show that, in the context of type II compactifications with D-branes, this concept translates to the kinetic mixing between U(1) gauge symmetries arising in the open and closed string sectors. We argue that in generic D-brane models such mixing is experimentally detectable through the existence of milli-charged particles. We compute these gauge kinetic functions by classifying the 4d monopoles of a compactification and analyzing the Witten effect on them, finding agreement with previous results and exte…
We present several new ideas on how to search for weakly interacting sub-eV particles in laboratory experiments. The first experiment is sensitive to minicharged particles. It exploits that in strong electric fields particle - antiparticle pairs are produced by the Schwinger mechanism. The charged particles move along the lines of the electric field and generate a current that can be measured. The other two experiments are designed to search for hidden-sector photons. They are based on photon - hidden photon oscillations and resemble classic light shining through a wall experiments. One uses (…
Dark sectors with Abelian gauge symmetries can interact with ordinary matter via kinetic mixing. In such scenarios, magnetic monopoles of a broken dark $U(1)$ will appear in our sector as confined milli-magnetically charged objects under ordinary electromagnetism. Halo ellipticity constraints are shown to significantly bound the strength of dark magnetic Coulomb monopole interactions. The bound monopole ground state, which in vacuum is stable and has no magnetic charge or moment, is shown to become quantum mechanically unstable in the presence of an external, ordinary magnetic field. If these …
We provide a variant model of strongly interacting massive particle (SIMP), where composite dark matter comes from a strongly interacting U(1) theory. We first explain a non-Abelian version of the model with an additional singlet field, which is mixed with the Higgs field to maintain the kinetic equilibrium between the hidden and Standard Model (SM) sectors. The mixing leads to signals that would be detected by future collider experiments, direct DM detection experiments, and beam-dump experiments. Then we investigate a U(1) theory with a scalar monopole, where U(1) charged particles are confi…
While the evidence for dark matter continues to grow, the nature of the dark matter remains a mystery. A dark $U(1)_D$ gauge theory can have a small kinetic mixing with the visible photon which provides a portal to the dark sector. Magnetic monopoles of the dark $U(1)_D$ can obtain small magnetic couplings to our photon through this kinetic mixing. This coupling is only manifest below the mass of the dark photon; at these scales the monopoles are bound together by tubes of dark magnetic flux. These flux tubes can produce phase shifts in Aharonov-Bohm type experiments. We outline how this scena…
We show how hybrid inflation can be successfully realized in a supersymmetric model with gauge group G_{PS}= SU(4)_c x SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R. By including a non-renormalizable superpotential term, we generate an inflationary valley along which G_{PS} is broken to the standard model gauge group. Thus, catastrophic production of the doubly charged magnetic monopoles, which are predicted by the model, cannot occur at the end of inflation. The results of the cosmic background explorer can be reproduced with natural values (of order 10^{-3}) of the relevant coupling constant, and symmetry breaking scal…
I analyze the interplay of gauge and global symmetries in the theory of topological defects. In a two-dimensional model in which both gauge symmetries and {\it exact} global symmetries are spontaneously broken, stable vortices may fail to exist even though magnetic flux is topologically conserved. Following Vachaspati and Achúcarro, I formulate the condition that must be satisfied by the pattern of symmetry breakdown for finite-energy configurations to exist in which the conserved magnetic flux is spread out instead of confined to a localized vortex. If this condition is met, vortices are alwa…
