Can Dark Matter Induce Cosmological Evolution of the Fundamental Constants of Nature?

Stadnik, Y. V.; Flambaum, V. V.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.115.201301

Cited by 241 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…In spirit, the limit derived here from BBN is similar to the one obtained in[96,97] for the very low mass limit m 10 −16 eV of a real scalar quadratically coupled to fermions. There, the field value is not oscillating during BBN either 19.…”

supporting

confidence: 75%

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Very light asymmetric dark matter

Alonso-Álvarez¹,

Gehrlein²,

Jaeckel³

et al. 2019

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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Very light dark matter is usually taken to consist of uncharged bosons such as axion-like particles or dark photons. Here, we consider the prospect of very light, possibly even sub-eV dark matter carrying a net charge that is (approximately) conserved. By making use of the Affleck-Dine mechanism for its production, we show that a sizable fraction of the energy density can be stored in the asymmetric component. We furthermore argue that there exist regions of parameter space where the energy density contained in symmetric particle-antiparticle pairs without net charge can to some degree be depleted by considering couplings to additional fields. Finally, we make an initial foray into the phenomenology of this scenario by considering the possibility that dark matter is coupled to the visible sector via the Higgs portal.

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supporting

confidence: 75%

“…More precisely, this would look similar to the real scalar case with quadratic fermion couplings studied, e.g., in[96,97].…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

Very light asymmetric dark matter

Alonso-Álvarez¹,

Gehrlein²,

Jaeckel³

et al. 2019

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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“…In contrast to A, fifth force experiments only weakly constrain the interaction that is quadratic in φ in Eq. (40), and comparable limits arise from the effects of the small shifts in the SM parameters induced by a φ 2 background in the early Universe [51,52]. However, bounds from both of these sources turn out to be negligible in the models that we consider.…”

Section: Portal Couplings and Fifth Force Searchesmentioning

confidence: 84%

Thermal dark energy

Hardy

Parameswaran

2020

Phys. Rev. D

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We present a novel source of dark energy, which is motivated by the prevalence of hidden sectors in string theory models and is consistent with all of the proposed swampland conjectures. Thermal effects hold a light hidden sector scalar at a point in field space that is not a minimum of its zero temperature potential. This leads to an effective 'cosmological constant', with an equation of state w = −1, despite the scalar's zero temperature potential having only a 4D Minkowski or AdS vacuum. For scalar masses µeV, which could be technically natural via sequestering, there are large regions of phenomenologically viable parameter space such that the induced vacuum energy matches the measured dark energy density. Additionally, in many models a standard cosmological history automatically leads to the scalar having the required initial conditions. We study the possible observational signals of such a model, including at fifth force experiments and through ∆N eff measurements. Similar dynamics that are active at earlier times could resolve the tension between different measurements of H0 and can lead to a detectable stochastic gravitational wave background.

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“…(2) could originate from a Higgs portal coupling of the form L ⊃ bϕjHj 2 , which is one ultraviolet completion into a renormalizable model with a particularly low cutoff [7]. Scalar fields with quadratic couplings to matter [19][20][21], e.g. L ⊃ ϕ 2 jHj 2 , give rise to analogous signatures as the linear couplings but have drastically more fine-tuned masses for the same physical effect, so we shall not consider them further.…”

Section: Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search for light scalar dark matter with atomic gravitational wave detectors

et al. 2018

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We show that gravitational wave detectors based on a type of atom interferometry are sensitive to ultralight scalar dark matter. Such dark matter can cause temporal oscillations in fundamental constants with a frequency set by the dark matter mass and amplitude determined by the local dark matter density. The result is a modulation of atomic transition energies. We point out a new time-domain signature of this effect in a type of gravitational wave detector that compares two spatially separated atom interferometers referenced by a common laser. Such a detector can improve on current searches for electron-mass or electric-charge modulus dark matter by up to 10 orders of magnitude in coupling, in a frequency band complementary to that of other proposals. It demonstrates that this class of atomic sensors is qualitatively different from other gravitational wave detectors, including those based on laser interferometry. By using atomic-clock-like interferometers, laser noise is mitigated with only a single baseline. These atomic sensors can thus detect scalar signals in addition to tensor signals.

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Can Dark Matter Induce Cosmological Evolution of the Fundamental Constants of Nature?

Cited by 241 publications

References 75 publications

Very light asymmetric dark matter

Very light asymmetric dark matter

Thermal dark energy

Search for light scalar dark matter with atomic gravitational wave detectors

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