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  • Open Access

Atomic observables induced by cosmic fields

S. Lahs1,*, D. Comparat1, F. Kirk2,3,4, and B. Roberts5

  • *Contact author: sebastian.lahs@tuwien.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 015041 – Published 29 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j7s3-wjg6

Abstract

The existence of cosmic fields made from yet unknown light bosons is predicted in many extensions to the Standard Model. They are especially of interest as possible constituents of dark matter. To detect such light and weakly interacting fields, atomic precision measurements offer one of the most sensitive platforms. In this work, we derive which atomic observables are sensitive to what kind of cosmic field couplings. For this we consider fields that couple either through scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial vector, or tensor couplings. We derive the corresponding nonrelativistic atomic potentials. Based on their symmetry properties, these can induce direct energy shifts or induce atomic electric dipole, magnetic dipole, electric quadrupole as well as nuclear Schiff and anapole moments.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 015041– Published 29 January, 2026
  • Received 9 October 2025
  • Accepted 1 December 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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