- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Background suppression in quantum sensing of dark matter via collective entangled-state projection

Shion Chen1, Hajime Fukuda2,*, Yutaro Iiyama3, Yuya Mino3, Takeo Moroi2,†, Mikio Nakahara4, Tatsumi Nitta5, and Thanaporn Sichanugrist2,‡

  • 1Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
  • 2Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
  • 3International Center for Elementary Particle Physics (ICEPP), The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
  • 4IQM Quantum Computers, Keilaranta 19, Espoo, 02150, Finland
  • 5QUP (WPI), KEK, Oho 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan

  • *Contact author: hfukuda@hep-th.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
  • †Contact author: moroi@hep-th.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
  • ‡Contact author: thanaporn@hep-th.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055014 – Published 5 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/k5dm-k163

Abstract

We show that measuring dark matter signal by projecting quantum sensors in the collective excited state can highly suppress the noncollective noise background, hence improving the sensitivity significantly. We trace the evolution of the sensors’ state in the presence of both dark matter effect and sensors’ decoherence effects, optimizing the protocol execution time, and show that the suppression of background by a factor equal to the number of sensors is possible. This method does not require the entanglement of sensors during the signal accumulation time, hence circumventing the difficulty of maintaining the lifetime of the entangled state that is present in other enhancement proposals. This protocol is also general regarding the type of qubit sensors.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (55)

  1. C. Degen, F. Reinhard, and P. Cappellaro, Quantum sensing, Rev. Mod. Phys. 89, 035002 (2017).
  2. A. Chou et al., Quantum sensors for high energy physics, arXiv:2311.01930.
  3. F. Zwicky, On the masses of nebulae and of clusters of nebulae, Astrophys. J. 86, 217 (1937).
  4. Planck Collaboration, Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters, Astron. Astrophys. 641, A6 (2020).
  5. Particle Data Group Collaboration, Review of particle physics, Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024).
  6. A. V. Dixit, S. Chakram, K. He, A. Agrawal, R. K. Naik, D. I. Schuster, and A. Chou, Searching for dark matter with a superconducting qubit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 141302 (2021).
  7. S. Chen, H. Fukuda, T. Inada, T. Moroi, T. Nitta, and T. Sichanugrist, Detecting hidden photon dark matter using the direct excitation of transmon qubits, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 211001 (2023).
  8. S. Chen, H. Fukuda, T. Inada, T. Moroi, T. Nitta, and T. Sichanugrist, Quantum enhancement in dark matter detection with quantum computation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 021801 (2024).
  9. A. Agrawal, A. V. Dixit, T. Roy, S. Chakram, K. He, R. K. Naik, D. I. Schuster, and A. Chou, Stimulated emission of signal photons from dark matter waves, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 140801 (2024).
  10. C. Braggio et al., Quantum-Enhanced sensing of axion dark matter with a transmon-based single microwave photon counter, Phys. Rev. X 15, 021031 (2025).
  11. S. Chen, H. Fukuda, T. Inada, T. Moroi, T. Nitta, and T. Sichanugrist, Search for QCD axion dark matter with transmon qubits and quantum circuit, Phys. Rev. D 110, 115021 (2024).
  12. Z. Dong, D. Kim, K. Kong, M. Park, and M. A. S. Alcaraz, Quantum sensing radiative decays of neutrinos and dark matter particles, arXiv:2508.09139.
  13. S. Chigusa, M. Hazumi, E. D. Herbschleb, N. Mizuochi, and K. Nakayama, Light dark matter search with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2025) 083.
  14. S. Chigusa, M. Hazumi, E. D. Herbschleb, Y. Matsuzaki, N. Mizuochi, and K. Nakayama, Nuclear spin metrology with nitrogen vacancy center in diamond for axion dark matter detection, Phys. Rev. D 111, 075028 (2025).
  15. A. Ito, R. Kitano, W. Nakano, and R. Takai, Quantum entanglement of ions for light dark matter detection, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2024) 124.
  16. X. Fan, G. Gabrielse, P. W. Graham, R. Harnik, T. G. Myers, H. Ramani, B. A.  D. Sukra, S. S.  Y. Wong, and Y. Xiao, One-electron quantum cyclotron as a Milli-eV dark-photon detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 261801 (2022).
  17. G. Engelhardt, A. Bhoonah, and W. V. Liu, Detecting axion dark matter with Rydberg atoms via induced electric dipole transitions, Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 023017 (2024).
  18. R. Moretti, D. Labranca, P. Campana, R. Carobene, M. Gobbo, M. A. Castellanos-Beltran et al., Transmon qubit modeling and characterization for dark matter search, IEEE Trans. Quantum Eng. 7, 1 (2026).
  19. S. Chigusa, T. Kasamaki, T. Kusano, T. Moroi, K. Nakayama, N. Ozawa et al., Dark matter detection using optically trapped Rydberg atom tweezer arrays, arXiv:2507.12860.
  20. P. Arias, D. Cadamuro, M. Goodsell, J. Jaeckel, J. Redondo, and A. Ringwald, WISPy cold dark matter, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 06 (2012) 013.
  21. L. Hui, Wave dark matter, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 59, 247 (2021).
  22. Z. Li et al., Error per single-qubit gate below 10−4 in a superconducting qubit, npj Quantum Inf. 9, 111 (2023).
  23. R. Li, K. Kubo, Y. Ho, Z. Yan, Y. Nakamura, and H. Goto, Realization of high-fidelity CZ gate based on a double-transmon coupler, Phys. Rev. X 14, 041050 (2024).
  24. L. Chen et al., Transmon qubit readout fidelity at the threshold for quantum error correction without a quantum-limited amplifier, npj Quantum Inf. 9, 37 (2023).
  25. J. Koch, T. M. Yu, J. Gambetta, A. A. Houck, D. I. Schuster, J. Majer, A. Blais, M. H. Devoret, S. M. Girvin, and R. J. Schoelkopf, Charge-insensitive qubit design derived from the Cooper pair box, Phys. Rev. A 76, 042319 (2007).
  26. S. K. Lamoreaux, K. A. van Bibber, K. W. Lehnert, and G. Carosi, Analysis of single-photon and linear amplifier detectors for microwave cavity dark matter axion searches, Phys. Rev. D 88, 035020 (2013).
  27. J. Huang, M. Zhuang, and C. Lee, Entanglement-enhanced quantum metrology: From standard quantum limit to Heisenberg limit, Appl. Phys. Rev. 11, 031302 (2024).
  28. H. Fukuda, Y. Matsuzaki, and T. Sichanugrist, Directional search for light dark matter with quantum sensors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 241802 (2025).
  29. S. F. Huelga, C. Macchiavello, T. Pellizzari, A. K. Ekert, M. B. Plenio, and J. I. Cirac, On the improvement of frequency standards with quantum entanglement, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 3865 (1997).
  30. W. Dur, G. Vidal, and J. I. Cirac, Three qubits can be entangled in two inequivalent ways, Phys. Rev. A 62, 062314 (2000).
  31. J. Shu, B. Xu, and Y. Xu, Eliminating incoherent noise: A coherent quantum approach in multi-sensor dark matter detection, arXiv:2410.22413.
  32. G. Lindblad, On the generators of quantum dynamical semigroups, Commun. Math. Phys. 48, 119 (1976).
  33. V. Gorini, A. Kossakowski, and E. C. G. Sudarshan, Completely positive dynamical semigroups of N level systems, J. Math. Phys. (N.Y.) 17, 821 (1976).
  34. X. Jin, A. Kamal, A. Sears, T. Gudmundsen, D. Hover, J. Miloshi et al., Thermal and residual excited-state population in a 3D transmon qubit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 240501 (2015).
  35. IBM Quantum, https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/computers, 2025.
  36. T. Piskor, M. Schöndorf, M. Bauer, D. Smith, T. Ayral, S. Pogorzalek et al., Simulation and benchmarking of real quantum hardware, arXiv:2508.04483.
  37. P. Figueroa-Romero, M. Papič, A. Auer, and I. de Vega, Estimating the coherence of noise in mid-scale quantum systems, arXiv:2409.02110.
  38. D. Y. Cheong, N. L. Rodd, and L.-T. Wang, Quantum description of wave dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 111, 015028 (2025).
  39. M. G. A. Paris, Quantum estimation for quantum technology, Int. J. Quantum. Inform. 07, 125 (2009).
  40. T. Sichanugrist, H. Fukuda, T. Moroi, K. Nakayama, S. Chigusa, N. Mizuochi, M. Hazumi, and Y. Matsuzaki, Entanglement-enhanced ac magnetometry in the presence of Markovian noise, Phys. Rev. A 111, 042605 (2025).
  41. D. M. Greenberger, M. A. Horne, and A. Zeilinger, Going beyond Bell’s theorem, Fundam. Theor. Phys. 37, 69 (1989).
  42. M. Plesch and Č. Brukner, Quantum-state preparation with universal gate decompositions, Phys. Rev. A 83, 032302 (2011).
  43. X.-M. Zhang, T. Li, and X. Yuan, Quantum state preparation with optimal circuit depth: Implementations and applications, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 230504 (2022).
  44. F. Wagner, D. J. Egger, and F. Liers, Optimized noise suppression for quantum circuits, INFORMS J. Comput. 37, 22 (2025).
  45. D. Cruz, R. Fournier, F. Gremion, A. Jeannerot, K. Komagata, T. Tosic et al., Efficient quantum algorithms for GHZ and W states and implementation on the IBM quantum computer, Adv. Quantum Technol. 2, 1900015 (2019).
  46. M. W. Doherty, N. B. Manson, P. Delaney, F. Jelezko, J. Wrachtrup, and L. C. Hollenberg, The nitrogen-vacancy colour centre in diamond, Phys. Rep. 528, 1 (2013).
  47. E. M. Kessler, I. Lovchinsky, A. O. Sushkov, and M. D. Lukin, Quantum error correction for metrology, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 150802 (2014).
  48. W. Dür, M. Skotiniotis, F. Froewis, and B. Kraus, Improved quantum metrology using quantum error correction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 080801 (2014).
  49. G. Arrad, Y. Vinkler, D. Aharonov, and A. Retzker, Increasing sensing resolution with error correction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 150801 (2014).
  50. H. Fukuda, T. Moroi, and T. Sichanugrist, Quantum error correction-like noise mitigation for wave-like dark matter searches with quantum sensors, arXiv:2511.03253.
  51. R. H. Dicke, Coherence in spontaneous radiation processes, Phys. Rev. 93, 99 (1954).
  52. Z. H. Saleem, M. Perlin, A. Shaji, and S. K. Gray, Achieving the Heisenberg limit with Dicke states in noisy quantum metrology, Phys. Rev. A 109, 052615 (2024).
  53. https://utelecon.adm.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/research_computing/utokyo_azure/.
  54. M. A. Nielsen and I. L. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2012).
  55. J. Preskill, Lecture notes for ph219/cs219: Quantum computation (formerly ph229). 2025.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055014– Published 5 March, 2026
  • Received 10 October 2025
  • Accepted 12 February 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation