Dark Photon Conjecture Fizzles

Dark photons sound like objects confused about their purpose, but in reality they are part of a comprehensive theory of dark matter. Researchers imagine that dark photons have photon-like interactions with other dark matter particles. And these hypothetical particles have recently gained interest because they might explain why the observed value of the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment disagrees slightly with predictions. However, this muon connection now appears to have been ruled out by the BaBar Collaboration at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. The researchers found no signal of dark photons in their electron-positron collision data.