uncharted territory

Astronomical observations have indicated the existence of “dark matter”, which makes up more than 80% of all matter and interacts with visible matter only via gravity. There is no proof for the interaction of dark matter with photons, which are the elementary particles of which light is composed, hence the term “dark” for this type of matter. It remains a mystery what dark matter is made of and whether there are interactions with conventional matter that are still unknown.

A theoretical approach suggests that dark matter could consist of particles that are extremely light and behave more like waves than individual particles: so-called “ultralight” dark matter. In this case, previously undiscovered, weak interactions of dark matter with photons would lead to minuscule oscillations of the fine-structure constant. The fine-structure constant is the natural constant that describes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction.

Researchers at PTB have used an atomic clock that is particularly sensitive to possible changes of the fine-structure constant in a search for ultralight dark matter. The clock was compared with two other atomic clocks with lower sensitivities in months-long measurements. The resulting measurement data were investigated for oscillations, the signature of ultralight dark matter. Since no significant oscillations were found, the dark matter remained “dark”, even under closer examination.

The absence of a signal allowed for the determination of new experimental upper limits on the strength of a possible coupling of ultralight matter to photons. Previous limits were improved by more than one order of magnitude over a wide range. At the same time, the researchers also studied whether the fine-structure constant might change over time, for example by increasing or decreasing very slowly. Such a variation was not detected in the data. Here, existing limits were also tightened, indicating that the constant remains constant even over long periods of time.

In contrast to previous clock comparisons, where each atomic clock required its own experimental system, two of the three atomic clocks were realized in a single experimental setup in this work. For this purpose, two different transition frequencies of a single trapped ion were used. This is an important step towards making optical frequency comparisons even more compact and robust, for example, for a future search for dark matter in space.