# Proposal for gravitational direct detection of dark matter

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method for directly detecting dark matter through its gravitational effects using an array of quantum-limited sensors, potentially enabling detection of Planck-scale dark matter particles.

## Contribution

It introduces a new gravitational detection technique employing quantum sensors, addressing environmental and quantum noise challenges for dark matter detection.

## Key findings

- Detection of Planck-scale dark matter is theoretically possible with current quantum sensor technology.
- A large array of gram-scale sensors can achieve the sensitivity needed for gravitational dark matter detection.
- The paper discusses key experimental challenges and pathways to realize this detection method.

## Abstract

The only coupling dark matter is guaranteed to have with the standard model is through gravity. Here we propose a concept for direct dark matter detection using only this gravitational coupling. We suggest that an array of quantum-limited mechanical impulse sensors may be capable of detecting the correlated gravitational force created by a passing dark matter particle. We consider the effects of irreducible noise from couplings of the sensors to the environment and noise due to the quantum measurement process. We show that the signal from Planck-scale dark matter is in principle detectable using a large number of gram-scale sensors in a meter-scale array with sufficiently low quantum noise, and discuss some experimental challenges en route to achieving this target.