Direct detection of dark photon dark matter using radio telescopes

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to detect ultralight dark photon dark matter using radio telescopes, leveraging the induced harmonic oscillations in electrons to identify monochromatic signals and setting new constraints on kinetic mixing.

Contribution

It introduces a new radio telescope-based approach for direct detection of dark photon dark matter and demonstrates its effectiveness with existing and future telescope data.

Findings

FAST data constrains kinetic mixing to 10^{-12} at 1-1.5 GHz

LOFAR and SKA1 can significantly improve sensitivity from 10 MHz to 10 GHz

Radio telescopes can outperform cosmic microwave background constraints

Abstract

Dark photons can be the ultralight dark matter candidate, interacting with Standard Model particles via kinetic mixing. We propose to search for ultralight dark photon dark matter (DPDM) through the local absorption at different radio telescopes. The local DPDM can induce harmonic oscillations of electrons inside the antenna of radio telescopes. It leads to a monochromatic radio signal and can be recorded by telescope receivers. Using the observation data from the FAST telescope, the upper limit on the kinetic mixing can already reach $10^{-12}$ for DPDM oscillation frequencies at $1-1.5$ GHz, which is stronger than the cosmic microwave background constraint by about one order of magnitude. Furthermore, large-scale interferometric arrays like LOFAR and SKA1 telescopes can achieve extraordinary sensitivities for direct DPDM search from 10 MHz to 10 GHz.