Dark photon dark matter constraints and a tentative signal at the TASEH experiment

Abstract: The dark photon is a well motivated candidate for the dark matter which comprises most of the mass of our visible Universe, leading to worldwide experimental and observational efforts towards its discovery. A primary tool in this search is the cavity haloscope, which facilitates resonantly enhanced conversion to photons from both dark photons and axions. In this context, limits from axion search experiments are often directly converted into dark photon constraints, without re-analyzing the original data. However, this rescaling may not fully capture all of the relevant physics due to various reasons. By re-examining data taken by the Taiwan Axion Search Experiment with Haloscope (TASEH) experiment, we derive a world-leading constraint on the dark photon parameter space, excluding $|\epsilon|\gtrsim2\times10^{-14}$ in the $19.46 - 19.84\,\mu$eV mass range, which exceeds the naive `rescaling limit' by roughly one order of magnitude. In this data, we also identify a tentative signal with a local significance of 4.7$\sigma$, previously disregarded due to an axion-specific veto, corresponding to a dark photon with mass $m_X \simeq 19.5\,\mu$eV ($f_X\simeq 4.71$ GHz) and kinetic mixing $\epsilon \simeq 2.2\times10^{-15}$.