Probing Ultralight Dark Matter with Quantum Clocks

by Dr Eric Madge Pimentel (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Wednesday 2 Apr 2025, 14:30 → 16:30 Europe/Rome

1/1-2 - Aula "C. Voci" (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio Marzolo)

Ultralight dark matter can induce oscillations in fundamental constants of nature, such as the fine-structure constant, the strength of the strong interaction, and particle masses.  These oscillations can be probed through highly precise measurements of transition frequencies in atomic, molecular, and nuclear systems.  This talk will focus on the potential for detecting ultralight dark matter that predominantly couples to nuclei, a particularly challenging aspect to probe using atomic transitions alone.  While atomic systems have limitations in detecting such couplings, molecular rotational and vibrational transitions offer a promising avenue for testing these theories.  I will present an analysis of the potential constraints on dark matter nuclear interactions derived from frequency comparisons between a molecular iodine ion and a calcium ion clock, demonstrating that such experiments can explore previously untested regions of parameter space.  Looking ahead, the development of nuclear clocks, particularly following the recent breakthrough in laser excitation of the nuclear transition in Th-229, promises even greater sensitivity.  While full-fledged nuclear clocks are still in their early stages, I will show that spectroscopic data from these pioneering efforts already provide the opportunity to derive initial constraints on ultralight dark matter.