Dark Matter Direct Detection with Accelerometers

TL;DR

This paper proposes using accelerometers like torsion balances, atom interferometry, and pulsar timing to detect ultra-light dark matter particles through their oscillating, EP-violating forces, opening new experimental avenues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for dark matter detection using accelerometers to probe low-mass dark matter candidates, including the relaxion, in unexplored parameter space.

Findings

Accelerometers can detect time-oscillating, EP-violating forces from light dark matter.

Proposed methods can explore large unexplored parameter space in upcoming years.

Accelerometers offer new direct detection strategies for dark matter.

Abstract

The mass of the dark matter particle is unknown, and may be as low as ~$10^{-22}$ eV. The lighter part of this range, below ~eV, is relatively unexplored both theoretically and experimentally but contains an array of natural dark matter candidates. An example is the relaxion, a light boson predicted by cosmological solutions to the hierarchy problem. One of the few generic signals such light dark matter can produce is a time-oscillating, EP-violating force. We propose searches for this using accelerometers, and consider in detail the examples of torsion balances, atom interferometry, and pulsar timing. These approaches have the potential to probe large parts of unexplored parameter space in the next several years. Thus such accelerometers provide radically new avenues for the direct detection of dark matter.