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Precision Metrology Meets Cosmology: Improved Constraints on Ultralight Dark Matter from Atom-Cavity Frequency Comparisons

Colin J. Kennedy1, Eric Oelker1,*, John M. Robinson1, Tobias Bothwell1, Dhruv Kedar1, William R. Milner1, G. Edward Marti1,2, Andrei Derevianko3, and Jun Ye1

  • 1JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA
  • 2Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, United States
  • 3Department of Physics, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557, USA

  • *Present address: School of Physics and Astronomy, SUPA, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 201302 – Published 12 November, 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.201302

Abstract

We conduct frequency comparisons between a state-of-the-art strontium optical lattice clock, a cryogenic crystalline silicon cavity, and a hydrogen maser to set new bounds on the coupling of ultralight dark matter to standard model particles and fields in the mass range of 10−16−10−21  eV. The key advantage of this two-part ratio comparison is the differential sensitivity to time variation of both the fine-structure constant and the electron mass, achieving a substantially improved limit on the moduli of ultralight dark matter, particularly at higher masses than typical atomic spectroscopic results. Furthermore, we demonstrate an extension of the search range to even higher masses by use of dynamical decoupling techniques. These results highlight the importance of using the best-performing atomic clocks for fundamental physics applications, as all-optical timescales are increasingly integrated with, and will eventually supplant, existing microwave timescales.

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synopsis

Optical Clocks Join the Hunt for Dark Matter

Published 12 November, 2020

Researchers use precise clocks and an extremely stable optical cavity to find new constraints on how the dilaton, a hypothesized dark matter particle, interacts with ordinary matter.

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