http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.01854
Single-photon atom gradiometry is a powerful experimental technique that can be employed to search for the oscillation of atomic transition energies induced by ultralight scalar dark matter (ULDM). In the sub-Hz regime the background is expected to be dominated by gravity gradient noise (GGN), which arises as a result of mass fluctuations around the experiment. In this work we model the GGN as surface Rayleigh waves and construct a likelihood-based analysis that consistently folds GGN into the sensitivity estimates of vertical atom gradiometers in the frequency window between 1 mHz and 1 Hz. We show that in certain geological settings GGN can be significantly mitigated when operating a multi-gradiometer configuration, which consists of three or more atom interferometers in the same baseline. Multi-gradiometer experiments, such as future versions of AION and MAGIS-100, have the potential to probe regions of scalar ULDM parameter space in the sub-Hz regime that have not been excluded by existing experiments.
L. Badurina, V. Gibson, C. McCabe, et. al.
Fri, 4 Nov 22
46/84
Comments: 25 pages plus appendices, 10 figures, comments welcome