Probing Ultralight Dark Matter at the Mega-Planck Scale with the Thorium Nuclear Clock
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
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2026
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| author | Arakawa, Jason Doyle, Jack F. Fuchs, Elina Higgins, Jacob S. Kirk, Fiona Li, Kai Ooi, Tian Perez, Gilad Ratzinger, Wolfram Safronova, Marianna S. Schumm, Thorsten Ye, Jun Zhang, Chuankun |
| author_facet | Arakawa, Jason Doyle, Jack F. Fuchs, Elina Higgins, Jacob S. Kirk, Fiona Li, Kai Ooi, Tian Perez, Gilad Ratzinger, Wolfram Safronova, Marianna S. Schumm, Thorsten Ye, Jun Zhang, Chuankun |
| contents | Ultralight dark matter is expected to induce oscillations of nuclear parameters. These oscillations are characterized by extremely weak couplings or high suppression scales, with the Planck scale - the characteristic scale of quantum gravity - serving as a natural benchmark. Probing this phenomenon requires systems with exceptional sensitivity to shifts in nuclear energies. The uniquely low-energy nuclear isomeric transition in ${}^{229}$Th provides such sensitivity: it directly probes the nuclear interaction and, owing to a near cancellation between electromagnetic and nuclear contributions, its response to changes in nuclear structure is greatly amplified. We devise and perform a new type of ultrasensitive search for dark matter which uses the precision nuclear spectroscopy at JILA to set the strongest bounds in the mass range $10^{-21}\,{\rm eV} \lesssim m_{\rm DM} \lesssim 10^{-19}\,{\rm eV}$. Our results probe effective interaction scales exceeding $10^6$ times the Planck scale (the Mega-Planck scale) and establish the ${}^{229}$Th system as the leading probe of dark matter couplings to the nuclear sector. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_16804 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Probing Ultralight Dark Matter at the Mega-Planck Scale with the Thorium Nuclear Clock Arakawa, Jason Doyle, Jack F. Fuchs, Elina Higgins, Jacob S. Kirk, Fiona Li, Kai Ooi, Tian Perez, Gilad Ratzinger, Wolfram Safronova, Marianna S. Schumm, Thorsten Ye, Jun Zhang, Chuankun High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment Atomic Physics Ultralight dark matter is expected to induce oscillations of nuclear parameters. These oscillations are characterized by extremely weak couplings or high suppression scales, with the Planck scale - the characteristic scale of quantum gravity - serving as a natural benchmark. Probing this phenomenon requires systems with exceptional sensitivity to shifts in nuclear energies. The uniquely low-energy nuclear isomeric transition in ${}^{229}$Th provides such sensitivity: it directly probes the nuclear interaction and, owing to a near cancellation between electromagnetic and nuclear contributions, its response to changes in nuclear structure is greatly amplified. We devise and perform a new type of ultrasensitive search for dark matter which uses the precision nuclear spectroscopy at JILA to set the strongest bounds in the mass range $10^{-21}\,{\rm eV} \lesssim m_{\rm DM} \lesssim 10^{-19}\,{\rm eV}$. Our results probe effective interaction scales exceeding $10^6$ times the Planck scale (the Mega-Planck scale) and establish the ${}^{229}$Th system as the leading probe of dark matter couplings to the nuclear sector. |
| title | Probing Ultralight Dark Matter at the Mega-Planck Scale with the Thorium Nuclear Clock |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment Atomic Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16804 |