The detection of gravitational waves from merging binaries has ushered in the era of gravitational wave interferometer astronomy. Besides these strong, transient, calamitous events, much weaker signals can be detected if the oscillations are nearly monochromatic and “continuous”, that is, coherent over a long time. In this work we show that ultra-light dark matter of spin two, owing to its universal coupling α to Standard Model fields, generates a signal that is akin to but distinct from a continuous gravitational wave. We show that this signal could be detected with current and planned gravitational wave interferometers. In the event of a null detection, current facilities could constrain the coupling to be below α ∼ 10^-7 for frequencies of tens of Hz, corresponding to dark matter masses around the 10^-13 eV mark. Future facilities could further lower these upper limits and extend them to smaller masses down to 10^-18 eV. These limits would be the most stringent bounds on the spin-2 Yukawa fifth force strength, parametrised by α, in the frequency ranges accessible by gravitational wave interferometers. The implementation of this type of searches for gravitational wave interferometers would therefore further our grasp of both dark matter and gravity.

合并双星对引力波的探测开启了引力波干涉仪天文学的时代。除了这些强烈的、瞬态的、灾难性的事件之外，如果振荡几乎是单色的和“连续的”，即长时间相干，则可以检测到更弱的信号。在这项工作中，我们展示了自旋二的超轻暗物质，由于其与标准模型场的普遍耦合 α，产生了一个类似于但不同于连续引力波的信号。我们表明，可以使用当前和计划中的引力波干涉仪检测到该信号。在零点检测的情况下，目前的设施可以将耦合限制在 α ∼ 10 ^-7以下，频率为几十赫兹，对应于 10 附近的暗物质质量^-13 eV 标记。未来的设施可以进一步降低这些上限，并将它们扩展到更小的质量，低至 10 ^-18 eV。这些限制将是自旋 2 Yukawa 第五力强度的最严格界限，由 α 参数化，在引力波干涉仪可访问的频率范围内。因此，对引力波干涉仪进行这种类型的搜索将进一步加深我们对暗物质和引力的掌握。