Hidden sector and

Article (Published Version)

Calmet, Xavier (2019) Hidden sector and gravity. Physics Letters B, 801. a135152. ISSN 0370- 2693

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Physics Letters B

www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb

Hidden sector and gravity

Xavier Calmet

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we consider a generic hidden sector which interacts only gravitationally with Standard Received 18 November 2019 Model particles. We show that quantum gravity leads to operators which can be probed with fifth force Received in revised form 3 December 2019 type experiments. The Eöt-Wash torsion pendulum experiment implies that the masses of any scalar field Accepted 9 December 2019 or any massive spin-2 field that couples with the usual gravitational strength to the energy-momentum Available online 11 December 2019 − tensor of the must be larger than 10 3 eV. This has interesting consequences for models Editor: N. Lambert − of which posit very light scalar fields. Dark matter must be heavier than 10 3 eV if it is a scalar field or a massive spin-2 field. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.

1. Introduction

The possibility of a hidden sector of particles beyond the Standard Model is a very interesting speculation which could potentially account for the missing dark matter that we know interacts very weakly with the particles of the Standard Model. From a theoretical point of view, hidden sectors are expected in many extensions of the Standard Model, ranging from grand unified theories to models that incorporate gravity such as . In this paper we make a very simple point. As gravity is universal, any hidden sector must interact to some level with the fields of the Standard Model. We will argue that gravitational interactions must lead to effective operators that connect Standard Model fields to fields of the hidden sector. We show that these interactions are sufficient to set a limit on the mass of any scalar or tensor field of a hidden sector. In this paper, we will consider a generic hidden sector that consists of scalar fields φi , pseudo-scalars fields ai , vector bosons Bμ,i (with a corresponding field strength Bμν,i which are anti-symmetrical in their two indices), s