Acausality from a dark sector

Solutions to the hierarchy problem that require partners for each standard model particle often require that these states live at or above the electroweak scale, to satisfy phenomenological bounds. Partners to possible dark sector particles may be significantly lighter, due to the assumed weakness of the couplings between the dark and visible sectors. Here we consider the possibility that a dark sector might include light Lee–Wick particles. We present the formulation of a theory in which a dark photon and its Lee–Wick partner have kinetic mixing with hypercharge. We point out that the Lee–Wick partner of the dark photon will lead to an apparent violation of causality at small distance scales that might be discerned in low-energy experiments.