English

Constraints on Ultralight Scalar and Dark Photon Dark Matter from PPTA-DR3 and EPTA-DR2

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-05-05 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The cold dark matter model successfully describes the Universe on large scales, yet faces challenges at sub-galactic scales. Ultralight dark matter (ULDM), with particle masses around 1022eV10^{-22} \mathrm{eV}, offers a promising solution to these small-scale issues. Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs), designed to detect nanohertz gravitational waves, can also provide a sensitive probe for ULDM signals. In this work, we perform a Bayesian search for ULDM using PTA data sets, focusing on two types of signals: the oscillatory gravitational potential from scalar ULDM and the fifth-force interaction mediated by dark photon dark matter (DPDM). We incorporate pulsar distances in the analysis to better model the ULDM density. No statistically significant evidence for ULDM has been found, therefore we place 95% confidence-level upper limits on the relevant parameters. For scalar ULDM, our analysis does not exclude the scenario in which ULDM constitutes all of dark matter. The constraints from PPTA-DR3 show significant improvements over the earlier PPTA-DR2 (2018 Preview) across most of the mass range, and are consistent with the recent uncorrelated limits from other PTAs. We also present for the first time the DPDM constraints using EPTA data. The obtained bounds on the DPDM from the EPTA-DR2 and PPTA-DR3 are comparable to existing constraints.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.02172,
  title  = {Constraints on Ultralight Scalar and Dark Photon Dark Matter from PPTA-DR3 and EPTA-DR2},
  author = {Xiao-Song Hu and Siyuan Chen and Kuo Liu and Xingjiang Zhu and Shi-Yi Zhao and Wu Jiang and John Antoniadis and N. D. Ramesh Bhat and Amodio Carleo and Shi Dai and Valentina Di Marco and Huanchen Hu and Wenhua Ling and Yang Liu and Saurav Mishra and Christopher J Russell and Ryan M. Shannon and Clemente Smarra and Jingbo Wang and Lin Wang and Andrew Zic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.02172},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Physical Review D, 14 pages, 6 figures