Sketch of the worldwide GNOME community. Credit: Hector Masia Roig
An worldwide group of researchers with key participation from the PRISMA+Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has printed for the primary time complete knowledge on the seek for darkish matter utilizing a worldwide community of optical magnetometers. According to the scientists, darkish matter fields ought to produce a attribute sign sample that may be detected by correlated measurements at a number of stations of the GNOME community. Analysis of information from a one-month steady GNOME operation has not but yielded a corresponding indication. However, the measurement permits the formulation of constraints on the traits of darkish matter, because the researchers report within the journal Nature Physics.
GNOME stands for Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic Physics Searches. Behind it are magnetometers distributed all over the world in Germany, Serbia, Poland, Israel, South Korea, China, Australia, and the United States. With GNOME, the researchers notably need to advance the seek for darkish matter—probably the most thrilling challenges of elementary physics within the twenty first century. After all, it has lengthy been identified that many puzzling astronomical observations, such because the rotation pace of stars in galaxies or the spectrum of the cosmic background radiation, can greatest be defined by darkish matter.
“Extremely gentle bosonic particles are thought of probably the most promising candidates for darkish matter at this time. These embrace so-called axion-like particles—ALPs for brief,” stated ProfessorDr. Dmitry Budker, professor at PRISMA+and at HIM, an institutional collaboration of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt. “They can be thought of as a classical area oscillating with a sure frequency. A peculiarity of such bosonic fields is that—in keeping with a potential theoretical situation—they will kind patterns and buildings. As a end result, the density of darkish matter might be concentrated in many various areas—discrete area partitions smaller than a galaxy however a lot bigger than Earth might kind, for instance.”
“If such a wall encounters the Earth, it’s progressively detected by the GNOME community and may trigger transient attribute sign patterns within the magnetometers,” defined Dr. Arne Wickenbrock, one of many examine’s co-authors. “Even extra, the indicators are correlated with one another in sure methods—relying on how briskly the wall is transferring and when it reaches every location.”
The community in the meantime consists of 14 magnetometers distributed over eight nations worldwide. Nine of them offered knowledge for the present evaluation. The measurement precept relies on an interplay of darkish matter with the nuclear spins of the atoms within the magnetometer. The atoms are excited with a laser at a selected frequency, orienting the nuclear spins in a single path. A possible darkish matter area can disturb this path, which is measurable.
Figuratively talking, one can think about that the atoms within the magnetometer initially dance round in confusion, as clarified byHector Masia-Roig, a doctoral pupil within the Budker group and likewise an creator of the present examine. “When they ‘hear’ the suitable frequency of laser gentle, all of them spin collectively. Dark matter particles can throw the dancing atoms out of steadiness. We can measure this perturbation very exactly.” Now the community of magnetometers turns into necessary: When the Earth strikes by means of a spatially restricted wall of darkish matter, the dancing atoms in all stations are progressively disturbed.One of those stations is situated in a laboratory on the Helmholtz Institute in Mainz. “Only after we match the indicators from all of the stations can we assess what triggered the disturbance,”stated Masia-Roig. “Applied to the picture of the dancing atoms, this implies: If we examine the measurement outcomes from all of the stations, we are able to resolve whether or not it was only one courageous dancer dancing out of line or really a world darkish matter disturbance.”
In the present examine, the analysis group analyzes knowledge from a one-month steady operation of GNOME. The end result: Statistically important indicators didn’t seem within the investigated mass vary from one femtoelectronvolt (feV) to 100,000 feV. Conversely, which means that the researchers can slim down the vary through which such indicators might theoretically be discovered even additional than earlier than. For situations that depend on discrete darkish matter partitions, this is a vital end result—”though we’ve not but been capable of detect such a site wall with our international ring search,” added Joseph Smiga, one other Ph.D. pupil in Mainz and creator of the examine.
Future work of the GNOME collaboration will concentrate on enhancing each the magnetometers themselves and the info evaluation. In explicit, steady operation needs to be much more secure. This is necessary to reliably seek for indicators that last more than an hour. In addition, the earlier alkali atoms within the magnetometers are to get replaced by noble gasses. Under the title Advanced GNOME, the researchers anticipate this to lead to significantly higher sensitivity for future measurements within the seek for ALPs and darkish matter.
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More info:
Samer Afach et al, Search for topological defect darkish matter with a world community of optical magnetometers, Nature Physics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-021-01393-y
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Worldwide coordinated seek for darkish matter (2022, January 21)
retrieved 21 January 2022
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