Search for ultralight dark matter with spectroscopy of radio-frequency atomic transitions

TL;DR

This study searches for ultralight bosonic dark matter by comparing atomic transition frequencies, setting new constraints on their interactions with Standard Model fields across a specific mass range.

Contribution

It provides the first constraints on scalar and pseudoscalar ultralight dark matter interactions using radio-frequency atomic transitions, improving upon previous direct and astrophysical limits.

Findings

Constraints on linear interactions improve previous results.

Constraints on quadratic interactions surpass previous limits.

Results cover a particle mass range from 10^{-17} to 10^{-13} eV.

Abstract

The effects of scalar and pseudoscalar ultralight bosonic dark matter (UBDM) were searched for by comparing the frequency of a quartz oscillator to that of a hyperfine-structure transition in $^{87}$Rb, and an electronic transition in $^{164}$Dy. We constrain linear interactions between a scalar UBDM field and Standard-Model (SM) fields for an underlying UBDM particle mass in the range $1\times10^{-17}-8.3\times10^{-13} $ eV and quadratic interactions between a pseudoscalar UBDM field and SM fields in the range $5\times10^{-18}- 4.1\times10^{-13} $ eV. Within regions of the respective ranges, our constraints on linear interactions significantly improve on results from previous, direct searches for oscillations in atomic parameters, while constraints on quadratic interactions surpass limits imposed by such direct searches as well as by astrophysical observations.