Researchers at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder, have used an advanced atomic clock to improve the search for dark matter. The team, led by NIST/JILA Fellow Jun Ye, combined a strontium lattice clock with an ultra-stable optical cavity to measure frequency ratios with unprecedented precision.
The research focused on ultralight dark matter, which is theorized to have a very small mass and a large wavelength. This type of dark matter is expected to cause tiny fluctuations in fundamental physical constants, such as the electron’s mass and the fine-structure constant.
The JILA team’s measurements constrained the coupling strength of ultralight dark matter to these constants to be on the order of 10-5 or less, setting the most precise limits to date. The research was published in Physical Review Letters.
The study demonstrates how improvements in atomic clocks and optical cavities can enhance dark matter searches. As these technologies continue to advance, future experiments could potentially detect dark matter’s effects on fundamental constants.
Keywords: dark matter, ultralight, atomic clocks, frequency ratios, cavity
