Probing (Ultra-) Light Dark Matter Using Synchrotron Based M\"ossbauer Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method using synchrotron-based M"ossbauer spectroscopy to detect ultra-light scalar dark matter by observing induced shifts in nuclear transition energies, promising to explore new parameter space.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental approach leveraging M"ossbauer spectroscopy with synchrotron radiation to search for high-frequency dark matter interactions.

Findings

Current setup can match existing bounds from equivalence principle tests.

Upgraded setups could explore dark matter up to MHz frequencies.

Method can significantly improve bounds on dark matter interactions in high-frequency range.

Abstract

We propose to search for (ultra)-light scalar dark matter (DM) using synchrotron radiation based M\"ossbauer spectroscopy technique. Such DM induces temporal variation in various fundamental constants, which in turn causes time modulation of the nuclear transition energies. When a M\"ossbauer source and absorber is separated by a large baseline, the DM induced shift between their energy levels can be tested by the modulation of the photon absorption spectrum. The narrow M\"ossbauer transitions allow the setup to efficiently probe DM in the high frequency range. We show that the reach of a M\"ossbauer experiment with the existing synchrotron beams is at par with the bounds from various equivalence principle violation searches. An improvement of the synchrotron setup would enable us to probe the hitherto uncharted territory of the DM parameter space upto MHz frequency. The proposed method would extend the DM search beyond the EP limit by several orders of magnitude, and would provide the best bound on DM interaction strength with various standard model fields in the high ($>$kHz) frequency region.