Dark Matter Direct Detection with Accelerometers

By P. Graham, D. Kaplan, J. Mardon, S. Rajendran, W. Terrano. 2015

219 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mass of the dark matter particle is unknown, and may be as low as $\ensuremath{\sim}1{0}^{\ensuremath{-}22}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$. The lighter part of this range, below $\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{eV}$, is relatively unexplored both theoretically and experimentally but contains an array of natural dark matter candidates. An example is the relaxion, a light boson predicted by cosmological solutions to the hierarchy problem. One of the few generic signals such light dark matter can produce is a time-oscillating, equivalence-principle-violating force. We propose searches for this using accelerometers, and consider in detail the examples of torsion balances, atom interferometry, and pulsar timing. These approaches have the potential to probe large parts of unexplored parameter space in the next several years. Thus such accelerometers provide radically new avenues for the direct detection of dark matter.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9a74c33e4080e8585557b304c4f7e2331cb88912

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. John Ellis
2. Marek Lewicki
3. Dmitry Budker
4. Andrei Derevianko
5. Marianna S. Safronova
6. D. DeMille
7. D. F. Kimball
8. C. Clark

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Jure Zupan
2. John Ellis
3. Marek Lewicki
4. Dmitry Budker
5. O. Buchmueller
6. G. Giudice
7. Kiwoon Choi
8. Sang Hui Im

Citations in the corpus

• Relaxion stars and their detection via atomic physics (2019, background): “(For earlier discussion in the context of dilaton DM see [15–17].”
• Stellar cooling bounds on new light particles: plasma mixing effects (2016, background): “mφ/vEW [45], demonstrating that our new stellar constraints are able to probe natural parameter space.”
• Recent Progress in the Physics of Axions and Axion-Like Particles (2020, background): “Ultralight axion dark matter can be tested by a future nuclear clock experiment [20], torsion balances [85], and atom interferometers such as AION [86] and AEDGE [87] through its CP-violating couplings.”
• AEDGE: Atomic Experiment for Dark Matter and Gravity Exploration in Space (2019, background): “This set-up is sensitive to, for instance, a dark vector boson with a mass below 10−15 eV coupled to the difference between baryon number (B) and lepton number (L) [37].”
• AION: an atom interferometer observatory and network (2019, methodology): “We assume that Sr and Sr are used and follow the analysis in [30].”
• Search for New Physics with Atoms and Molecules (2017, methodology): “Graham et al. (2016a) proposed an atom interferometric GW detector that can operate in a resonant detection mode and can switch between the broadband and narrowband detection modes to increase sensitivity.”
• Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor (MAGIS-100) (2021, unknown): “(wave-like) dark matter candidates [13, 14] and for dark energy [15], tests of gravity and searches for new”