Dark photon limits: A handbook

The dark photon is a massive hypothetical particle that interacts with the Standard Model by kinetically mixing with the visible photon. For small values of the mixing parameter, dark photons can evade cosmological bounds to be a viable dark matter candidate. Due to the similarities with the electromagnetic signals generated by axions, several bounds on dark photon signals are simply reinterpretations of historical bounds set by axion haloscopes. However, the dark photon has a property that the axion does not: an intrinsic polarization. Due to the rotation of the Earth, accurately accounting for this polarization is nontrivial, highly experiment dependent, and depends upon assumptions about the dark photon's production mechanism. We show that if one does account for the dark photon polarization, and the rotation of the Earth, an experiment's discovery reach can be enhanced by over an order of magnitude. We detail the strategies that would need to be taken to properly optimize a dark photon search. These include judiciously choosing the location and orientation of the experiment, as well as strategically timing any repeated measurements. Experiments located at 135 degrees or 155 degrees latitude, making three observations at different times of the sidereal day, can achieve a sensitivity that is fully optimized and insensitive to the dark photon's polarization state, and hence its production mechanism. We also point out that several well-known searches for axions employ techniques for testing signals that preclude their ability to set exclusion limits on dark photons, and hence should not be reinterpreted as such.