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Parkes Pulsar Timing Array constraints on ultralight scalar-field dark matter

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arxiv 1810.03227 v4 pith:COTEJETP submitted 2018-10-07 astro-ph.CO astro-ph.GAgr-qchep-ph

classification astro-ph.COastro-ph.GAgr-qchep-ph
keywords darkmattertimingultralightdensitypptapulsarpulsars
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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abstract

It is widely accepted that dark matter contributes about a quarter of the critical mass-energy density in our Universe. The nature of dark matter is currently unknown, with the mass of possible constituents spanning nearly one hundred orders of magnitude. The ultralight scalar field dark matter, consisting of extremely light bosons with $m \sim 10^{-22}$ eV and often called "fuzzy" dark matter, provides intriguing solutions to some challenges at sub-Galactic scales for the standard cold dark matter model. As shown by Khmelnitsky and Rubakov, such a scalar field in the Galaxy would produce an oscillating gravitational potential with nanohertz frequencies, resulting in periodic variations in the times of arrival of radio pulses from pulsars. The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) has been monitoring 20 millisecond pulsars at two to three weeks intervals for more than a decade. In addition to the detection of nanohertz gravitational waves, PPTA offers the opportunity for direct searches for fuzzy dark matter in an astrophysically feasible range of masses. We analyze the latest PPTA data set which includes timing observations for 26 pulsars made between 2004 and 2016. We perform a search in this data set for evidence of ultralight dark matter in the Galaxy using Bayesian and Frequentist methods. No statistically significant detection has been made. We therefore place upper limits on the local dark matter density. Our limits, improving on previous searches by a factor of two to five, constrain the dark matter density of ultralight bosons with $m \leq 10^{-23}$ eV to be below $6\,\text{GeV}\,\text{cm}^{-3}$ with 95\% confidence in the Earth neighborhood. Finally, we discuss the prospect of probing the astrophysically favored mass range $m \gtrsim 10^{-22}$ eV with next-generation pulsar timing facilities.

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Forward citations

Cited by 7 Pith papers

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

  1. Quantum Field Theory Of Cosmological Perturbations Induced By Ultralight Dark Matter

    hep-th 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Classical ULDM condensate decouples from GW propagation; squeezing-induced parametric resonance of primordial tensor modes is ≲10^{-12} for non-relativistic ULDM at equality.

  2. Correlated signals of ultralight scalar dark matter in pulsar timing

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A finite-spatial-correlation Gaussian-field prior for PTA ULDM signals interpolates between fully correlated and uncorrelated limits and is validated on blinded mock data for linear and quadratic couplings.

  3. Pulsar Timing Sensitivity to Dark Matter Substructure in the Presence of a Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 accept novelty 6.5 of 10

    A stochastic GWB suppresses PTA reach to DM substructure by 1–3 orders of magnitude relative to white-noise forecasts, with dynamic Shapiro least affected near 10^{-2} M_⊙.

  4. Probing Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter with Pulsar Timing Arrays

    hep-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For quadratically coupled ultralight dark matter, pulsar timing arrays can set competitive coherent-signal limits at 10^-24–10^-22 eV, while stochastic-signal limits remain weaker than equivalence-principle constraint...

  5. Searches for signatures of ultra-light axion dark matter in polarimetry data of the European Pulsar Timing Array

    astro-ph.CO 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Analysis of EPTA pulsar polarimetry finds no evidence for ultra-light axion dark matter, sets upper limits on the axion-photon coupling, and attributes a common 2-year-period signal to ionospheric Faraday rotation.

  6. Lensed fast radio bursts as a probe of time-varying gravitational potential induced by wave dark matter

    astro-ph.GA 2024-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Wave dark matter halo fluctuations would stretch lensed FRB signals by about 10^-10, a drift that one year of monitoring lensed repeating bursts could detect.

  7. The SKAO Pulsar Timing Array

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 accept novelty 3.5 of 10

    An SKAO PTA with ~174 millisecond pulsars can dominate nanohertz GW sensitivity within four years and enable continuous-wave detections plus anisotropy maps of the gravitational-wave background.

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