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Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Dark Matter with Quadratic Couplings

9 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

9 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Ultralight dark matter is a compelling dark matter candidate. In this work, we examine the impact of quadratically-coupled ultralight dark matter on the predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The presence of ultralight dark matter can modify the effective values of fundamental constants during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, modifying the predicted abundances of the primordial elements such as Helium-4. We improve upon the existing literature in two ways: firstly, we take into account the thermal mass acquired by the ultralight dark matter due to its quadratic interactions with the Standard Model bath, which affects the cosmological evolution of the dark matter. Secondly, we treat the weak freeze-out using the full kinetic equations instead of using an instantaneous approximation. Both improvements were shown to impact the Helium-4 prediction in the context of universally-coupled dark matter in previous work. We extend these lessons to more general couplings. We show that with these modifications, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis provides strong constraints of ultralight dark matter with quadratic couplings to the Standard Model for a large range of masses as compared to other probes of this model, such as equivalence principle tests, atomic and nuclear clocks, as well as astrophysical and other cosmological probes.

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hep-ph 9

years

2026 7 2025 2

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representative citing papers

Stellar Superradiance and Low-Energy Absorption in Dense Nuclear Media

hep-ph · 2025-12-15 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

Collective nucleon scattering in neutron-star matter suppresses the effective absorption of ultralight bosons at the long wavelengths relevant for superradiance, weakening the link between stellar cooling bounds and superradiant instability rates.

$\phi$-Dwarfs: White Dwarfs probe Quadratically Coupled Scalars

hep-ph · 2025-09-29 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

White dwarf mass-radius data exclude large parameter space for ultralight scalars quadratically coupled to fermions by predicting forbidden radius gaps and mass shifts toward the Chandrasekhar limit or altered maximum masses.

Oscillating Imprints of Dark Matter in Mesons Decays

hep-ph · 2026-05-22 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Ultralight dark matter induces oscillating CKM elements that can be probed at NA62 through direct counting of meson decay events, which avoids sensitivity loss from unknown particle flux.

Time-dependent signals of new physics at the LHC

hep-ph · 2026-05-11 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Incorporating timing information from time-dependent new physics signals can improve LHC search sensitivity by up to a factor of two compared to standard time-invariant analyses.

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Showing 9 of 9 citing papers.