Related papers: Atom Interferometer Tests of Dark Matter
Dark matter (DM) particles with mass in the sub-GeV range are an attractive alternative to heavier weakly-interacting massive particles, but direct detection of such light particles is challenging. If however DM-nucleus scattering leads to…
Atom interferometers measure quantum interference patterns in the wave functions of cold atoms that follow superpositions of different space-time trajectories. These can be sensitive to phase shifts induced by fundamental physics processes…
Direct detection strategies are proposed for dark matter particles with MeV to GeV mass. In this largely unexplored mass range, dark matter scattering with electrons can cause single-electron ionization signals, which are detectable with…
We discuss the use of atom interferometry as a tool to search for Dark Matter (DM) composed of ultra-light scalar fields. Previous work on ultra-light DM detection using accelerometers has considered the possibility of equivalence principle…
Although various pieces of indirect evidence about the nature of dark matter have been collected, its direct detection has eluded experimental searches despite extensive effort. If the mass of dark matter is below 1 MeV, it is essentially…
We propose the nuclear interferometer - a single-photon interferometry experiment based upon the thorium-229 nuclear clock transition - as a novel detector for ultra-light dark matter. Thanks to the enhanced sensitivity of this transition…
The next generation of ultralight dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments, which could confirm sub-eV bosons as the dominant source of DM, will feature multiple detectors operating at various terrestrial locations. As a result of the…
Dark matter could be made up of dark photons, massive but very light particles whose interactions with matter resemble those of usual photons but suppressed by a small mixing parameter. We analyze the main approaches to dark photon…
Atomic interferometry can be used to probe dark energy models coupled to matter. We consider the constraints coming from recent experimental results on models generalising the inverse power law chameleons such as $f(R)$ gravity in the large…
The detection of dark matter is a challenging problem in modern physics. The ultralight scalar and axion dark matter could induce the oscillation of the nuclear charge radii and then oscillate the atomic transition frequency by interacting…
Particle dark matter could have a mass anywhere from that of ultralight candidates, $m_\chi\sim 10^{-21}\,$eV, to scales well above the GeV. Conventional laboratory searches are sensitive to a range of masses close to the weak scale, while…
We propose a new strategy to directly detect light particle dark matter that has long-ranged interactions with ordinary matter. The approach involves distorting the local flow of dark matter with time-varying fields and measuring these…
We study how coherent scattering of a background gas off an atom (or other matter) interferometer can lead to enhanced signals from phase shifts and contrast loss. We focus on the inclusion of realistic features of atom interferometers such…
We propose the use of the super-binomial variance in the count rate of an atom interferometer as a novel signature of dark matter. We show that the dark matter induced shift in this observable is enhanced by N, the number of atoms used per…
Dark Matter (DM) is an elusive form of matter which has been postulated to explain astronomical observations through its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, gravitational lensing of light around these, and through its imprint on…
A new frontier in the search for dark matter (DM) is based on the idea of detecting the decoherence caused by DM scattering against a mesoscopic superposition of normal matter. Such superpositions are uniquely sensitive to very small…
The search for sub-GeV dark matter (DM) particles via electronic transitions in underground detectors attracted much theoretical and experimental interest in the past few years. A still open question in this field is whether experimental…
Dark matter with mass below about a GeV is essentially unobservable in conventional direct detection experiments. However, newly proposed technology will allow the detection of single electron events in semiconductor materials with…
We study the direct detection prospects for a representative set of simplified models of sub-GeV dark matter (DM), accounting for existing terrestrial, astrophysical and cosmological constraints. We focus on dark matter lighter than an MeV,…
Theories of dark energy require a screening mechanism to explain why the associated scalar fields do not mediate observable long range fifth forces. The archetype of this is the chameleon field. Here we show that individual atoms are too…