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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Axion signal searching using hybrid nuclear-electronic spin systems

Xiangjun Tan1,* and Zhanning Wang2

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, WC1E 6BT London, United Kingdom
  • 2Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 3, 28049 Madrid, Spain

  • *Contact author: xiangjun.tan.25@ucl.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. D 114, L051902 – Published 8 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4rbk-zmxk

Abstract

Conventional nuclear magnetic resonance searches for the galactic axion wind face technical challenges at lower frequencies, where the sensitivity of inductive readout scales less efficiently. In the pulsed architecture, a nuclear control sequence filters the axion field, a final π/2 pulse maps phase onto population, and the electron spin reads the resulting hyperfine-conditioned shift. We demonstrate analytically that this dispersive upconversion preserves the specific sidereal and annual modulation signatures required to distinguish dark matter signals from instrumental backgrounds. When instantiated in a silicon Bi209 donor platform, the hybrid sensor is projected to outperform direct nuclear detection by more than an order of magnitude over the mass range 10−16–10−10  eV. With additional collective and resonant enhancements, the design can reach discovery-level sensitivity to Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky-scale axion-nucleon couplings after integration over the measurement time, establishing hyperfine-mediated sensing as a compact solid-state path for dark-matter searches.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, L051902– Published 8 September, 2026
  • Received 12 November 2025
  • Revised 4 March 2026
  • Accepted 17 July 2026
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