Pith. sign in

REVIEW 7 cited by

Probing an ultralight QCD axion with electromagnetic quadratic interaction

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2307.14962 v4 pith:SYIQFG5Y submitted 2023-07-27 hep-ph

Probing an ultralight QCD axion with electromagnetic quadratic interaction

classification hep-ph
keywords quadraticaxioncouplingslow-frequencyelectromagneticsearchadditionalatomic
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

The axion-gluon coupling is the defining feature of the QCD axion. This feature induces additional and qualitatively different interactions of the axion with standard model particles -- quadratic couplings. Previously, hadronic quadratic couplings have been studied and experimental implications have been explored especially in the context of atomic spectroscopy and interferometry. We investigate additional quadratic couplings to the electromagnetic field and electron mass. These electromagnetic quadratic couplings are generated at the loop level from threshold corrections and are expected to be present in the absence of fine-tuning. While they are generally loop-suppressed compared to the hadronic ones, they open up new ways to search for the QCD axion, for instance via optical atomic clocks. Moreover, due to the velocity spread of the dark matter field, the quadratic nature of the coupling leads to low-frequency fluctuations in any detector setup. These distinctive low-frequency fluctuations offer a way to search for heavier axions. We provide an analytic expression for the power spectral density of this low-frequency background and briefly discuss experimental strategies for a low-frequency background search.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Background-Induced Forces from Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Earth screening of quadratically coupled ultralight dark matter produces a multi-band frequency structure in the induced force whose sideband amplitudes vary annually, enabling improved constraints from MICROSCOPE and...

  2. Is the Conventional Picture of Coherence Time Complete? Dark Matter Recoherence

    hep-ph 2026-01 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Ultralight dark matter exhibits recoherence due to the solar gravitational potential, yielding formally divergent coherence times at long timescales and enhanced search sensitivity.

  3. Probing Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    LISA forecasts for quadratically coupled ultralight dark matter show competitive or superior sensitivity to terrestrial and astrophysical probes in selected mass windows, free of screening.

  4. Stellar Superradiance and Low-Energy Absorption in Dense Nuclear Media

    hep-ph 2025-12 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 s...

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

    hep-ph 2025-09 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.

  6. Nelson-Barr ultralight dark matter

    hep-ph 2024-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Nelson-Barr mechanism yields ultralight scalar dark matter inducing time-periodic variation in CKM matrix elements, distinguishable from QCD axion and detectable via nuclear clocks.

  7. The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Probing new signatures of ultralight axions with gravitational lensing

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    New upper limits on ultralight axion dark matter fraction (<1.5% at 10^{-26} eV, <9% at 10^{-25} eV at 95% CL) from combined CMB lensing data, plus marginal 2.1σ preference at 10^{-24.5} eV driven by few points.