Probing Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
Xucheng Gan, Hyungjin Kim, Anna-Malin Lemke, Andrea Mitridate
hep-ph, astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-07-09
Comments: 21 pages, 1 appendix, 4 figures
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Ultralight dark matter can interact with Standard Model particles via gravitational and non-gravitational interactions.
Terminology
Abstract
Ultralight dark matter can interact with Standard Model particles via gravitational and non-gravitational interactions. Through such interactions, it can leave distinctive signals in gravitational-wave experiments. In this work, we investigate signals induced by ultralight dark matter quadratically coupled to the Standard Model in the future space-borne gravitational-wave detector, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Due to the quadratic nature of the coupling, dark matter signals appear at two distinct frequencies: the frequency corresponding to twice the dark matter mass, and frequencies below the typical dark matter kinetic energy. We analyze both contributions and show that LISA can surpass current constraints from terrestrial and astrophysical probes in certain mass ranges. We also find that dark matter signals in LISA are free from screening effects which significantly limit the sensitivity of terrestrial experiments.
Sources
- Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
- LISA Definition Study Report
- Untangling the merger history of massive black holes with LISA
- Reconstructing the massive black hole cosmic history through gravitational waves
- Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. I: Supermassive black hole binaries
- Intermediate and Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals -- Astrophysics, Science Applications and Detection using LISA
- Science with the space-based interferometer LISA. V: Extreme mass-ratio inspirals
- The unique potential of extreme mass-ratio inspirals for gravitational-wave astronomy
- The gravitational wave signal from the Galactic disk population of binaries containing two compact objects
- Gravitational-wave emission from compact Galactic binaries
- Prospects for detection of detached double white dwarf binaries with Gaia, LSST and LISA
- LISA verification binaries with updated distances from Gaia Data Release 2
- Identifying LISA verification binaries among the Galactic population of double white dwarfs
- Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. II: Gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions
- Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA
- Detecting gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions with LISA: an update
- Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
- Gravitational waves from first-order phase transitions in LISA: reconstruction pipeline and physics interpretation
- Direct Detection of Dark Matter with Space-based Laser Interferometers
- Search for Small-Mass Black Hole Dark Matter with Space-Based Gravitational Wave Detectors
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