Sensitivity of atom interferometry to ultralight scalar field dark matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how atom interferometry can detect ultralight scalar field dark matter by measuring phase shifts caused by variations in atomic mass and gravitational effects, expanding the search capabilities for such dark matter.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using atom interferometry to detect oscillatory dark matter fields through phase shifts from atomic mass changes and gravitational variations.

Findings

Several orders of magnitude of unexplored phase space can be probed.

Atom interferometry can detect oscillatory dark matter effects.

New detection channels for ultralight scalar field dark matter are identified.

Abstract

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 violating effects whereby gradients in the dark matter field can directly produce relative accelerations between media of differing composition. In atom interferometers, we find that time-varying phase signals from oscillatory, or dilaton-like, DM can also arise due to changes in the atom rest mass that can occur between light-pulses throughout the interferometer sequence as well as changes in the earth's gravitational field. We estimate that several orders of magnitude of unexplored phase space for light DM fields can be probed with our proposed method.