Detecting Quadratically Coupled Ultra-light Dark Matter with Stimulated Annihilation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to detect ultra-light dark matter by using stimulated annihilation, which enhances the annihilation rate via Bose enhancement, producing detectable electromagnetic signals with low-frequency radio telescopes.

Contribution

It introduces a new detection technique leveraging stimulated annihilation of ULDM, enabling probing of electromagnetic quadratic coupling with existing radio telescope infrastructure.

Findings

Stimulated annihilation significantly boosts ULDM detection prospects.

Forecasts show sensitivity to quadratic coupling with 50 MW radio emitter.

Potential detection with telescopes like LOFAR, UTR-2, and ngLOBO.

Abstract

Ultra-light Dark Matter (ULDM) is one of the most promising DM candidates. Due to the Bose enhancement, we find the annihilation rate of the ULDM in the presence of background photon radiation can be greatly enhanced and produce a distinctive reflected electromagnetic wave with an angular frequency equal to the ULDM mass. We propose to utilize such stimulated annihilation to probe the ULDM with the electromagnetic quadratic coupling by emitting a beam of radio into space. With a power of 50 MW emitter, we forecast the sensitivity of quadratic coupling in different local halo models for low-frequency radio telescopes, such as LOFAR, UTR-2 and ngLOBO.