[Submitted on 3 Nov 2022]
Abstract: 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.
Submission history
From: Leonardo Badurina [view email]
[v1]
Thu, 3 Nov 2022 14:42:53 UTC (3,060 KB)
