Detection of Bosenovae with Quantum Sensors on Earth and in Space

• Main Authors: Arakawa, Jason, Eby, Joshua, Safronova, Marianna S, Takhistov, Volodymyr, Zaheer, Muhammad H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 28-06-2023
• Subjects: Physics - Atomic Physics; Physics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics; Physics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; Physics - High Energy Physics - Phenomenology; Physics - Quantum Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2306.16468

In a broad class of theories, the accumulation of ultralight dark matter
(ULDM) with particles of mass $10^{-22}~\textrm{eV} < m_{\phi} < 1~\textrm{eV}$
leads the to 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. Our analysis can be readily extended to different
scenarios of relativistic scalar particle emission.