Detection of bosenovae with quantum sensors on Earth and in space

Abstract

In a broad class of theories, the accumulation of ultralight dark matter (ULDM) with particles of mass <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:msup> <a:mn>10</a:mn> <a:mrow> <a:mo>−</a:mo> <a:mn>22</a:mn> </a:mrow> </a:msup> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mi>eV</a:mi> <a:mo>&lt;</a:mo> <a:msub> <a:mi>m</a:mi> <a:mi>ϕ</a:mi> </a:msub> <a:mo>&lt;</a:mo> <a:mn>1</a:mn> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mtext> </a:mtext> <a:mi>eV</a:mi> </a:math> leads to the formation of long-lived bound states known as boson stars. When the ULDM exhibits self-interactions, prodigious bursts of energy carried by relativistic bosons are released from collapsing boson stars in bosenova explosions. We extensively explore the potential reach of terrestrial and space-based experiments for detecting transient signatures of emitted relativistic bursts of scalar particles, including ULDM coupled to photons, electrons, and gluons, capturing a wide range of motivated theories. For the scenario of relaxion ULDM, we demonstrate that upcoming experiments and technology such as nuclear clocks as well as space-based interferometers will be able to sensitively probe orders of magnitude in the ULDM coupling-mass parameter space, challenging to study otherwise, by detecting signatures of transient bosenova events. Detection of a bosenova event may also give information about microphysics properties of <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <c:mi>ϕ</c:mi> </c:math> that would otherwise be difficult with typical direct detection methods. Our analysis can be readily extended to different scenarios of relativistic scalar particle emission. Published by the American Physical Society 2024