Shining Light on Polarizable Dark Particles

Understand

We investigate the possibilities of searching for a self-conjugate polarizable particle in the self-interactions of light.

• We first observe that polarizability can arise either from the exchange of mediator states or as a consequence of the inner structure of the particle.
• To exemplify this second possibility we calculate the polarizability of a neutral bosonic open string, and find it is described only by dimension-8 operators.
• Focussing on the spin-0 case, we calculate the light-by-light scattering amplitudes induced by the dimension-6 and 8 polarizability operators.