Phenomenological implications on a hidden sector from the Festina Lente bound

Abstract

We apply the Festina Lente (FL) bound on a hidden sector with $U(1)$ gauge symmetries. Since the FL bound puts a lower bound on masses of particles charged under the $U(1)$ gauge symmetries, it is possible to constrain the hidden sector even with a tiny coupling to the Standard Model. In particular, we focus on the phenomenological implications of the FL bound on milli-charged particles, which naturally arise when kinetic mixing between the photon and the hidden photon is allowed. It turns out that the milli-charged particle with the mass $M\lesssim 5$ meV is prohibited by the FL bound in the case of a single hidden $U(1)$, independent of the value of kinetic mixing. This bound is crucial when bosonic dark matter is taken in consideration in this framework: the fuzzy bosonic dark matter models requesting minuscule masses are ruled out by the FL bound if the longevity of dark matter is protected by the hidden gauge symmetry.