Gavilan-Martin Daniel, Łukasiewicz Grzegorz, Padniuk Mikhail, Klinger Emmanuel, Smolis Magdalena, Figueroa Nataniel L, Jackson Kimball Derek F, Sushkov Alexander O, Pustelny Szymon, Budker Dmitry, Wickenbrock Arne
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Helmholtz Institute Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2025 May 28;16(1):4953. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-60178-6.
Axion-like particles (ALPs) arise from well-motivated extensions to the Standard Model and could account for dark matter. ALP dark matter would manifest as a field oscillating at an (as of yet) unknown frequency. The frequency depends linearly on the ALP mass and plausibly ranges from 10 to 10 eV/c. This motivates broadband search approaches. We report on a direct search for ALP dark matter with an interferometer composed of two atomic K-Rb-He comagnetometers, one situated in Mainz, Germany, and the other in Kraków, Poland. We leverage the anticipated spatio-temporal coherence properties of the ALP field and probe all ALP-gradient-spin interactions covering a mass range of nine orders of magnitude. No significant evidence of an ALP signal is found. We thus place new upper limits on the ALP-neutron, ALP-proton and ALP-electron couplings reaching below g < 10 GeV, g < 10 GeV and g < 10 GeV, respectively. These limits improve upon previous laboratory constraints for neutron and proton couplings by up to three orders of magnitude.
类轴子粒子（ALPs）源自对标准模型合理的扩展，并且可能构成暗物质。轴子暗物质将表现为一个以（目前）未知频率振荡的场。该频率与轴子质量呈线性关系，合理范围为10至10 eV/c。这推动了宽带搜索方法的发展。我们报告了一项使用由两个原子钾 - 铷 - 氦共磁强计组成的干涉仪对轴子暗物质进行直接搜索的实验，一个位于德国美因茨，另一个位于波兰克拉科夫。我们利用轴子场预期的时空相干特性，探测了所有轴子 - 梯度 - 自旋相互作用，涵盖了九个数量级的质量范围。未发现轴子信号的显著证据。因此，我们对轴子与中子、轴子与质子以及轴子与电子的耦合分别设定了新的上限，分别为g < 10 GeV、g < 10 GeV和g < 10 GeV。这些限制比之前实验室对中子和质子耦合的限制提高了多达三个数量级。
