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  • Letter

Constraining ultralight dark matter using the Fermi-LAT pulsar timing array

Zi-Qing Xia1, Tian-Peng Tang1,2, Xiaoyuan Huang1,2,*, Qiang Yuan1,2,†, and Yi-Zhong Fan1,2,‡

  • 1Key Laboratory of DM and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210033, China
  • 2School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China

  • *Corresponding author. xyhuang@pmo.ac.cn
  • †Corresponding author. yuanq@pmo.ac.cn
  • ‡Corresponding author. yzfan@pmo.ac.cn

Phys. Rev. D 107, L121302 – Published 28 June, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.L121302

Abstract

Ultralight dark matter (ULDM) is proposed as a theoretical candidate of dark matter particles with masses of approximately 10−22  eV. The interactions between ULDM particles and standard model particles would cause variations in pulse arrival times of millisecond pulsars, which means that the pulsar timing array (PTA) can be used to indirectly detect ULDM. In this Letter, we use the gamma-ray PTA composed of 29 millisecond pulsars observed by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) to test four ULDM effects, including gravitational effects for generalized ULDM with different spin-0/1, the fifth-force coupling effect of dark photons, and the modified gravitational effect of the spin-2 ULDM. The gamma-ray pulsar timing is not affected by the ionized interstellar medium and suffers relatively simple noises, unlike that of the radio band. Our work is the first time that the gamma-ray PTA has been used to search for the ULDM. No significant signals of ULDM are found based on the Fermi-LAT PTA for all four kinds of ULDM models. Constraints on ULDM parameters are set with the 95% confidence level, which provides a complementary check of the nondetection of ULDM for radio PTAs and direct detection experiments.

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