Ultralight dark matter searches with atom interferometry

by Leonardo Badurina

Thursday 13 Oct 2022, 16:00 → 18:00 Australia/Sydney

Atom interferometry is a rapidly developing and powerful experimental technique that can be employed in different configurations for a wide variety of precision measurements, such as accelerations and changes in atomic structures. In this talk, I will give an overview of proposed searches for ultralight dark matter-induced fifth forces and time-dependent changes to atomic transition energies using these large-scale quantum sensors. After presenting the basics of atom interferometry, I will discuss a number of techniques for suppressing important backgrounds and extending the reach of future ground and space-based experiments, such as AION and STE-QUEST, to probe large parts of currently unconstrained scalar, vector and ALP model space.