Detecting dark photons from atomic rearrangement in the galaxy

We study a new dark sector signature for an atomic process of “rearrangement” in the galaxy. In this process, a hydrogen-like atomic dark matter state together with its anti-particle can rearrange to form a highly-excited bound state. This bound state will then de-excite into the ground state emitting a large number of dark photons that can be measured in experiments on Earth through their kinetic mixing with the photon. We find that for DM masses in the GeV range, the dark photons have enough energy to pass the thresholds of neutrino observatories such as Borexino and Super-Kamiokande that can probe for our scenario even when our atomic states constitute a small fraction of the total DM abundance. We study the corresponding bounds on the parameters of our model from current data as well as the prospects for future detectors.