Search for Axionlike Dark Matter through Nuclear Spin Precession in Electric and Magnetic Fields

Abstract

International audienceWe report on a search for ultralow-mass axionlike dark matter by analyzing the ratio of the spin-precession frequencies of stored ultracold neutrons and Hg199 atoms for an axion-induced oscillating electric dipole moment of the neutron and an axion-wind spin-precession effect. No signal consistent with dark matter is observed for the axion mass range 10-24≤ma≤10-17 eV. Our null result sets the first laboratory constraints on the coupling of axion dark matter to gluons, which improve on astrophysical limits by up to 3 orders of magnitude, and also improves on previous laboratory constraints on the axion coupling to nucleons by up to a factor of 40

Constraints on anharmonic corrections of fuzzy dark matter

“…Aside from the standard searches for axions, there is a wealth of dedicated searches and projected experiments on the lookout for ultralight axions. These include studies of the neutral hydrogen distribution in the universe [31,32], laboratory constraints based on nuclear interactions [33], variation of fundamental constants [34,35], astrophysical bounds [36][37][38], gravitational wave searches [39,40] and analysis of CMB spectral distortions [41,42]. A prominent feature of the model is the presence of anharmonic corrections over the mass -2 -…”

Emergent gauge symmetries and particle physics

“…Constraints from experiments tells us that M must be very large. Laboratory based experiments based on the two-photon anomalous couplings of the axion [109], ultracold neutron experiments to probe axion to gluon couplings [110], together with astrophysics and cosmology constraints suggest a favoured QCD axion mass between 1µeV and 3 meV [30,111], which is the sensitivity range of the ADMX experiment in Seattle [112], corresponding to M between about 6 × 10 9 and 6 × 10 12 GeV. The small axion interaction strength, ∼ 1/M , means that the small axion mass corresponds to a long lifetime and stable dark matter candidate, e.g., lifetime longer than about the present age of the Universe.…”

Comment on “Search for Axionlike Dark Matter with a Liquid-State Nuclear Spin Comagnetometer”

“…Any constraint on oscillations with periods, τ , long compared to the span of the data, T = 2.642 × 10 6 s, cannot be tighter than those on oscillations with periods shorter than T and in fact must be substantially weaker. This reduction in experimental sensitivity can be seen in other recent works that searched for similar effects [2][3][4][5].A simple analysis that provides the correct result and quantitative insight is a linear least-squares analysis (LLSA) such as that used in ref. [5].…”