Nongauge antisymmetric-tensor bosons mediating interactions in the hidden sector

Abstract

In a recent work, we have constructed a model of hidden sector of the Universe, consisting of sterile spin-1/2 Dirac fermions ("sterinos"), sterile spin-0 bosons ("sterons") conjectured to get spontaneously nonzero vacuum expectation value, and also of conventional photons assumed to participate both in the hidden and Standard-Model sectors (after the electroweak symmetry is spontaneously broken by the Standard-Model Higgs mechanism). This provides a "photonic portal" to the hidden sector as an alternative to the popular "Higgs portal". Moreover, we have proposed to stop the proliferation of new kinds of gauge bosons as sterile mediators of nongravitational interactions in the hidden sector, introducing instead nongauge mediating bosons described by an antisymmetric-tensor field (of dimension one), whose sources are given not only by sterino-antisterino pairs, but also by steron-photon pairs. Then, conventional photons display, beside the familiar gauge coupling to the Standard-Model electric current, a new nongauge weak coupling of sterile antisymmetric-tensor bosons to steron-photon pairs, where photons are described by the gauge-invariant electromagnetic field F_{\mu \nu}. The new mediators are unstable, decaying, for instance, into electron-positron pairs. When interacting in pairs, they can annihilate simply into two photons. The corresponding cross-section is calculated.