The Sun in Hidden Photons

Abstract

We present some aspects and first results of the emission of sub-eV mass hidden photons from the Sun. The contribution from a resonant region below the photosphere can be quite significant, raising previous estimates. This is relevant for the Telescope for Hidden Photon Search, TSHIPS I, currently targeting at meV-mass hidden photons with O(10^-6) kinetic mixing with the photon. These particles could account for the large effective number of neutrinos pointed at by the cosmic microwave background and other large-scale structure probes, and are motivated in some scenarios of string theory.