Speaker
Description
Ultralight dark matter candidates, such as axions and dark photons, are leading dark matter candidates. They may couple feebly to photons, sourcing oscillating electromagnetic signals in the Earth's conducting cavity formed between the ground and the ionosphere, providing detectable magnetic field signatures at wavelengths above the Earth's size. We carry out a project aiming to search for new physics using an unshielded high-sensitivity atomic magnetometer, termed the Geomagnetic Probe for nEw physiCS (GPEX). In this work, we report our first search for axion and dark photon dark matter, conducted in the desert of XiaoDushan in Gansu Province, China. Analysis of the collection of one-hour data shows no robust evidence for axion- or dark photon-induced magnetic signals. Correspondingly, we set the constraints on the axion-photon coupling with $g_{a\gamma\gamma} < 7\times10^{-10}\, \mathrm{GeV^{-1}}$ and the dark photon kinetic-mixing parameter $\epsilon < 2\times10^{-6}$ in the mass range $3.5 \times 10^{-16}\, \mathrm{eV} \sim 1.8 \times 10^{-14}\, \mathrm{eV}$. The sensitivities improve upon those achieved by the dedicated SNIPE-Hunt experiments by more than one order of magnitude and a factor of three, respectively. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of using ground-based quantum magnetic sensors for ultralight dark matter searches. Future networks of such detectors operating over extended periods could improve the sensitivity by about six orders of magnitude.