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1. Characterizing the quantum properties of ultralight dark matter: An open quantum systems approach

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.032003  

   Bernal, Jose-Daniel; Petery, Ryan B; Joven, K J; Singh, Swati (February 2025, Physical Review D)

   Obtaining insight into the constituents of dark matter and their interactions with normal matter has inspired a wide range of experimental efforts. Several approaches, particularly those involving searches for ultralight bosonic dark matter (UBDM) fields, involve the use of quantum systems or measurements performed at the limits imposed by quantum mechanics. While a classical treatment of UBDM and its detectors is satisfactory, a fully quantum description would assist in developing future detection strategies. Here, we present an open quantum systems approach that accomplishes this while providing intuition into the quantum nature of the detection process itself. Furthermore, we apply the quantum theory of optical coherence to characterize the statistical properties of the UBDM field. Using representative examples, we show that this theoretical treatment has implications in uncovering signatures of the cosmological production mechanism of the UBDM field and its galactic merger history. By adapting tools from quantum optics, this work will help facilitate the creation of novel methods to extract astrophysically relevant information from correlation measurements. Published by the American Physical Society2025 

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2. Stochastic ultralight dark matter fluctuations in pulsar timing arrays

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.055017  

   Kim, Hyungjin; Mitridate, Andrea (March 2024, Physical Review D)

   Metric perturbations induced by ultralight dark matter (ULDM) fields have long been identified as a potential target for pulsar timing array (PTA) observations. Previous works have focused on the coherent oscillation of metric perturbations at the characteristic frequency set by the ULDM mass. In this work, we show that ULDM fields source low-frequency stochastic metric fluctuations and that these low-frequency fluctuations can produce distinctive detectable signals in PTA data. Using the NANOGrav 12.5-yr dataset and synthetic datasets mimicking present and future PTA capabilities, we show that the current and future PTA observations provide the strongest probe of ULDM density within the Solar System for masses in the range of ${10}^{-18}\mathrm{eV}-{10}^{-16}\mathrm{eV}$ . Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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3. Quantum enhanced metrology in the search for fundamental physical phenomena

   https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhysLectNotes.40  

   Lehnert, Konrad (March 2022, SciPost Physics Lecture Notes)

   These notes summarize lectures given at the 2019 Les Houches summer school on Quantum Information Machines. They describe and review an application of quantum metrology concepts to searches for ultralight dark matter. In particular, for ultralight dark matter that couples as a weak classical force to a laboratory harmonic oscillator, quantum squeezing benefits experiments in which the mass of the dark matter particle is unknown. This benefit is present even if the oscillatory dark matter signal is much more coherent than the harmonic oscillator that it couples to, as is the case for microwave frequency searches for dark matter axion particles. 

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4. The NANOGrav 15 yr Dataset: A Case Study for Simplified Dispersion Measure Modeling for PSR J1455−3330 and the Impact on Gravitational Wave Sensitivity

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae6c1c  

   Lam, Michael T; Kaplan, David L; Agazie, Gabriella; Anumarlapudi, Akash; Archibald, Anne M; Arzoumanian, Zaven; Baker, Paul T; Brook, Paul R; Combs, Olivia A; Cromartie, H Thankful; et al (June 2026, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract Evidence for a low-frequency gravitational-wave background using pulsar timing arrays has generated recent interest in its underlying contributing sources. However, multiple investigations have seen that the significance of the evidence does not change with the choice of pulsar modeling techniques, but the resulting parameters from the gravitational wave searches do. PSR J1455−3330 is one of the longest-observed pulsars in the array monitored by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), but showed no evidence for long-timescale red noise, either intrinsic or the common signal found among many pulsars in the array. In this work, we argue that NANOGrav’s piecewise-constant function used to model variations in radio-frequency-dependent dispersive delay should not be used for this pulsar, and a much simpler physical model of a fixed solar wind density plus a linear or quadratic trend in dispersion measure is preferred. When the original model is replaced, (i) the pulsar’s timing parallax signal changes from an upper limit to a significant detection, (ii) red noise becomes significant, and (iii) the red noise is consistent with the common signal found for the other pulsars. Neither of these signals is radio-frequency dependent. While the same physical motivation will not apply to many of the pulsars currently used in pulsar timing arrays, we argue for careful, physically motivated timing and noise modeling of pulsars used in precision timing experiments. 

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5. SpaceQ - Direct Detection of Ultralight Dark Matter with Space Quantum Sensors

   https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1297569/v1  

   Tsai, Y-D.; Eby, J.; Safronova, M.S. (July 2022, ArXivorg)

   Recent advances in quantum sensors, including atomic clocks, enable searches for a broad range of dark matter candidates. The question of the dark matter distribution in the Solar system critically affects the reach of dark matter direct detection experiments. Partly motivated by the NASA Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC), we show that space quantum sensors present new opportunities for ultralight dark matter searches, especially for dark matter states bound to the Sun. We show that space quantum sensors can probe unexplored parameter space of ultralight dark matter, covering theoretical relaxion targets motivated by naturalness and Higgs mixing. If an atomic clock were able to make measurements on the interior of the solar system, it could probe this highly sensitive region directly and set very strong constraints on the existence of such a bound-state halo in our solar system. We present sensitivity projections for space-based probes of ultralight dark matter which couples to electron, photon, and gluon fields, based on current and future atomic, molecular, and nuclear clocks. 

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