Bulletin of the American Physical Society
49th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics APS Meeting
Volume 63, Number 5
Monday–Friday, May 28–June 1 2018; Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Session C06: Searches for Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter |
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Chair: Derek Jackson Kimball, California State University East Bay Room: Grand G |
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 10:30AM - 11:00AM |
C06.00001: New fundamental physics tests with spectroscopy and magnetic resonance Invited Speaker: Dmitry Budker I will present the latest results from a subset of ongoing experiments described on our group web pages: https://budker.uni-mainz.de/ and http://budker.berkeley.edu/ that use the methods of atomic spectroscopy, magnetometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 11:00AM - 11:30AM |
C06.00002: Hunts for dark matter with the global network of synchronized optical magnetometers Invited Speaker: Szymon Pustelny Despite enormous progress of modern science, Nature still holds several great secrets that slip our understanding. Observations such as Non-Newtonian rotation of galaxies, gravitational microlensing in seemingly empty space, accelerating expansion of the Universe, baryogensis, etc. motivate searches beyond the Standard Model. This is addressed by the development of theoretical models, which often introduce new interactions and particles. While the hypothetical particles couples to the ordinary matter mostly through gravity (dark-matter \text{casus}), some model predicts that they reveal different coupling affecting internal/quantum state of atoms or molecules. This motivates atomic-physics-based searches for physics beyond the Standard Model \cite{Safronova2017Search}). To date all dark-matter searches have returned null results. This not only triggered development of more sensitive experiments and different theoretical models, but also lead to rethinking of methodology of such searches. For example, any transient effects that may induced modification in system's state would be washed out by long averaging of the signals. To address this problem, the Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic physics (GNOME) has been proposed \cite{Pustelny2013GNOME} and implemented \cite{GNOMEwebsite}. The network consists of several sensitive optical magnetometers, operating in distant (1,000-10,000~km) locations. Via correlations measurements of the readouts of the magnetometers local noise can be suppressed and global (potentially) nonmagnetic disturbances of magnetometers' operation can be identified. This opens possibility for searches for transient exotic spin couplings. Such transient signals may be induced by interaction with topological defects of specific dark-matter constituents (axion-like particles) or ``collisions'' with the so-called Q-stars. During the presentation, the first scientific run of the GNOME will be discussed. The preliminary results of the network, achieved with 9 stations, will be presented and their implications for various theoretical models will be discussed. \begin{thebibliography}{} \bibitem{Safronova2017Search} M. S. Safronova, D. Budker, D. DeMille, D. F. Jackson Kimball, A. Derivianko, and C. W. Clark, \textit{arXiv} 1710:01833. \bibitem{Pustelny2013GNOME} S. Pustelny \textit{et al.}, \textit{Ann. Phys. (Berl.)} \textbf{525}, 659 (2013). \bibitem{GNOMEwebsite} https://budker.uni-mainz.de/gnome/ \end{thebibliography} [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 11:30AM - 12:00PM |
C06.00003: Global Positioning System as a dark matter detector Invited Speaker: Andrei Derevianko Cosmological observations indicate that dark matter (DM) constitutes 85\% of all matter in the Universe, yet conclusive evidence for DM in terrestrial experiments remains elusive. One of the possibilities is that DM can be composed from ultralight quantum fields whose self-interactions lead to the formation of DM objects in the form of stable topological defects. Such DM ``clumps'', depending on the masses of underlying fields, can be spatially large on the laboratory scale. As the Earth moves through the halo of DM objects, interactions with such DM clumps could lead to measurable variations in GPS signals which propagate through the satellite constellation at galactic velocities of $\sim 300$ km/s. Here we use the network of atomic clocks onboard GPS satellites as a $\sim50,000\,{\rm km}$ aperture DM detector. By mining 16 years of archival GPS data, we find no evidence for topological defects in the form of domain walls at our current sensitivity. As a result, we improve the present limits on certain DM-ordinary matter coupling strengths by up to six orders of magnitude. \it{Details: Roberts, et al. Search for domain wall dark matter with atomic clocks on board global positioning system satellites. Nature Commun. 8, 1195 (2017).} [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:00PM - 12:30PM |
C06.00004: CASPEr: The lab-scale NMR-based search for axion-like dark matter Invited Speaker: Alex Sushkov The nature of dark matter is one of the most important open problems in modern physics. Axions, originally introduced to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and axion-like particles (ALPs) are strongly motivated dark matter candidates. Nuclear spins interacting with axion-like background dark matter experience a torque, oscillating at the axion Compton frequency. The Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiments (CASPEr) use precision magnetometry and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to search for the effects of this interaction. CASPEr has the potential to detect axion-like dark matter in a wide mass range (10$^{-12}$ eV to 10$^{-6}$ eV, scanned by changing the bias magnetic field from approximately 0.1 gauss to 10 tesla), and with coupling strengths orders of magnitude beyond the current astrophysical and laboratory limits, and all the way down to those corresponding to the QCD axion. [Preview Abstract] |
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