Hunting for topological dark matter with atomic clocks

By Andrei Derevianko, M. Pospelov. Nature Physics, 2013

444 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A proposal for detecting dark matter originating from light fields rather than particles makes use of existing networks of atomic clocks to measure time discrepancies between clocks that are spatially separated. The cosmological applications of atomic clocks1,2,3 so far have been limited to searches for the uniform-in-time drift of fundamental constants4. We point out that a transient-in-time change of fundamental constants can be induced by dark-matter objects that have large spatial extent, such as stable topological defects5 built from light non-Standard Model fields. Networks of correlated atomic clocks, some of them already in existence6, such as the Global Positioning System, can be used as a powerful tool to search for topological defect dark matter, thus providing another important fundamental physics application for the ever-improving accuracy of atomic clocks. During the encounter with an extended dark-matter object, as it sweeps through the network, initially synchronized clocks will become desynchronized. Time discrepancies between spatially separated clocks are expected to exhibit a distinct signature, encoding the defect’s space structure and its interaction strength with atoms.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a675b76a435325914c0bccc15b8181059d11ead0

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Synchronization of Distant Optical Clocks at the Femtosecond Level (2015, unknown): “A physical network of optical time scales, derived from these clocks, could enable dramatic improvements in precision navigation and timing [5,11,12], phased sensor arrays, tests of special and general relativity [5,13–16], clock-based geodesy [5,17–19], and even future searches for dark matter [20]”
Search for New Physics with Atoms and Molecules (2017, background): “They could also modulate the values of the fundamental “constants” of nature, which can induce changes in atomic transition frequencies (Arvanitaki et al., 2015; Derevianko and Pospelov, 2014) and local gravitational field (Geraci and Derevianko, 2016).”
Micius quantum experiments in space (2022, background): “…et al., 2015), clockbased geodesy (Ludlow et al., 2015), the testing of the effects of special and general relativity (Müller, Soffel, and Klioner, 2008; Cacciapuoti and Salomon, 2009; Schiller et al., 2009; Ludlow et al., 2015), and even the search for dark matter (Derevianko and Pospelov, 2014).”
Frequency ratio of Yb and Sr clocks with 5 × 10−17 uncertainty at 150 seconds averaging time (2016, unknown): “ both effects in our evaluation, we model the lattice-induced light shift Δν ls as Δ𝜈ls=(� Δ𝜈L−�)(𝑛+ 1 2 )√𝑈e/𝐸r−(� Δ𝜈L+ 3 4 𝑑 (2𝑛2+2𝑛+1))𝑈 e/𝐸r +𝑑(2𝑛+1)(𝑈e⁄𝐸r)3/2−𝑑(𝑈e⁄𝐸r)2, (2) derived from eq. (12) of ref. 24 by substituting the single beam intensity I = U e /α E1 , where the at”
Radio for hidden-photon dark matter detection (2014, background): “There are only a few general types of dark matter candidates (consistent with effective field theory) in addition to WIMPs and light fields, including topological dark matter [3, 4] and ultra-heavy candidates such as primordial black holes.”
Axion dark matter, solitons and the cusp–core problem (2015, unknown): “Other signatures of the soliton components of an axion halo, e.g. in precision time-delay experiments with atomic clocks, may be similar to those with topological defect DM (Pospelov et al. 2013; Derevianko & Pospelov 2014; Stadnik & Flambaum 2014).”