Precision Measurement Noise Asymmetry and Its Annual Modulation as a Dark Matter Signature

Abstract

Dark matter may be composed of self-interacting ultralight quantum fields that form macroscopic objects. An example of which includes Q-balls, compact non-topological solitons predicted by a range of theories that are viable dark matter candidates. As the Earth moves through the galaxy, interactions with such objects may leave transient perturbations in terrestrial experiments. Here we propose a new dark matter signature: an asymmetry (and other non-Gaussianities) that may thereby be induced in the noise distributions of precision quantum sensors, such as atomic clocks, magnetometers, and interferometers. Further, we demonstrate that there would be a sizeable annual modulation in these signatures due to the annual variation of the Earth velocity with respect to dark matter halo. As an illustration of our formalism, we apply our method to 6 years of data from the atomic clocks on board GPS satellites and place constraints on couplings for macroscopic dark matter objects with radii R<104km, the region that is otherwise inaccessible using relatively sparse global networks.

AEDGE: Atomic Experiment for Dark Matter and Gravity Exploration in Space

“…For example, compared to GW signals from binary systems, where the frequency changes as the binary system evolves, the frequency of the DM signal is set by the mass of the scalar DM and will therefore remain constant. The DM speed distribution may also have distinctive features (see e.g., [38]) and there is a characteristic modulation over the course of a year, caused by the rotation of the Earth about the Sun [39]. If these distinctive features can be measured, they would point to a DM origin for the signal.…”

AION: An Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network

“…Unlike WIMP detectors, AION is expected to be particularly sensitive to DM substructures in the solar neighbourhood of the Milky Way's stellar halo, such as cold dark matter streams (see e.g. [54][55][56]). There are also annual modulations in the DM signal (such as an O(7)% change in signal bandwidth), and in the vector case the direction of polarisation of the DM field should be constant during the coherence time ∼ (v 2 m φ ) −1 ∼ 10 6 /m φ [57].…”

Using atomic clocks to detect local dark matter halos

“…These topological defects alter α and, therefore, as the topological defect passes through the Earth, there should be a geometric pattern in the change of each clock relative to a reference clock. There has, since this study, been several others that exploit atomic clocks to probe DM either by focusing on the transient effect of bypassing DM structures or by effects caused by the time variation of the DM field [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”