• Open Access

Earth as a transducer for dark-photon dark-matter detection

Michael A. Fedderke, Peter W. Graham, Derek F. Jackson Kimball, and Saarik Kalia
Phys. Rev. D 104, 075023 – Published 19 October 2021

Abstract

We propose the use of the Earth as a transducer for ultralight dark-matter detection. In particular, we point out a novel signal of kinetically mixed dark-photon dark matter: a monochromatic oscillating magnetic field generated at the surface of the Earth. Similar to the signal in a laboratory experiment in a shielded box (or cavity), this signal arises because the lower atmosphere is a low-conductivity air gap sandwiched between the highly conductive interior of the Earth below and ionosphere or interplanetary medium above. At low masses (frequencies) the signal in a laboratory detector is usually suppressed by the size of the detector multiplied by the dark-matter mass. Crucially, in our case the suppression is by the radius of the Earth, and not by the (much smaller) height of the atmosphere. We compute the size and global vectorial pattern of our magnetic field signal, which enables sensitive searches for this signal using unshielded magnetometers dispersed over the surface of the Earth. In principle, the signal we compute exists for any dark photon in the mass range 1021eVmA3×1014eV. We summarize the results of our companion paper [M. A. Fedderke et al., Search for dark-photon dark matter in the SuperMAG geomagnetic field dataset, arXiv:2108.08852], in which we detail such a search using a publicly available dataset from the SuperMAG Collaboration: we report no robust signal candidates and so place constraints in the (more limited) dark-photon dark-matter mass range 2×1018eVmA7×1017eV (corresponding to frequencies 6×104Hzf2×102Hz). These constraints are complementary to existing astrophysical bounds. Future searches for this signal may improve the sensitivity over a wide range of ultralight dark-matter candidates and masses.

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  • Received 15 June 2021
  • Accepted 23 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.075023

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Michael A. Fedderke1,2,*, Peter W. Graham2,†, Derek F. Jackson Kimball3,‡, and Saarik Kalia2,§

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA
  • 2Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
  • 3Department of Physics, California State University–East Bay, Hayward, California 94542, USA

  • *mfedderke@jhu.edu
  • pwgraham@stanford.edu
  • derek.jacksonkimball@csueastbay.edu
  • §saarik@stanford.edu

See Also

Search for dark-photon dark matter in the SuperMAG geomagnetic field dataset

Michael A. Fedderke, Peter W. Graham, Derek F. Jackson Kimball, and Saarik Kalia
Phys. Rev. D 104, 095032 (2021)

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Vol. 104, Iss. 7 — 1 October 2021

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