Background-Induced Forces from Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter
Abstract
Quadratically coupled ultralight scalar dark matter behaves as a coherent classical field whose interactions with matter can induce a composition-dependent force through the dark matter background. We present a complete calculation of this background-induced force beyond the spherically symmetric approximation. Using a partial-wave treatment of dark-matter scattering, we determine its angular dependence and derive an analytic description valid even when the dark-matter wavelength is much smaller than the Earth's radius. We show for the first time that Earth screening generates a characteristic frequency-band structure, splitting the signal into multiple sidebands that provide a distinctive experimental signature. We further show that the relative amplitudes of these sidebands vary annually as the satellite's Sun-synchronous orbital plane precesses in step with the Earth's revolution around the Sun, allowing us to construct a complete signal template. As an application of these results, we re-evaluate constraints from the MICROSCOPE mission, which currently provides the strongest laboratory limits on equivalence-principle violations from ultralight dark matter. We further show that proposed space-based equivalence-principle experiments, such as Galileo Galilei and STE-QUEST, can significantly enhance their sensitivity to ultralight scalar dark matter by incorporating the full frequency-band information.
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BibTeX
@misc{bouley2026backgroundinduced,
title = {{Background-Induced Forces from Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter}},
author = {Thomas Bouley and Xucheng Gan and Hailin Xu and Tien-Tien Yu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.28481},
eprint = {2606.28481},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28481},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Background-Induced Forces from Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter
AU - Thomas Bouley
AU - Xucheng Gan
AU - Hailin Xu
AU - Tien-Tien Yu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.28481
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28481
AB - Quadratically coupled ultralight scalar dark matter behaves as a coherent classical field whose interactions with matter can induce a composition-dependent force through the dark matter background. We present a complete calculation of this background-induced force beyond the spherically symmetric approximation. Using a partial-wave treatment of dark-matter scattering, we determine its angular dependence and derive an analytic description valid even when the dark-matter wavelength is much smaller than the Earth's radius. We show for the first time that Earth screening generates a characteristic frequency-band structure, splitting the signal into multiple sidebands that provide a distinctive experimental signature. We further show that the relative amplitudes of these sidebands vary annually as the satellite's Sun-synchronous orbital plane precesses in step with the Earth's revolution around the Sun, allowing us to construct a complete signal template. As an application of these results, we re-evaluate constraints from the MICROSCOPE mission, which currently provides the strongest laboratory limits on equivalence-principle violations from ultralight dark matter. We further show that proposed space-based equivalence-principle experiments, such as Galileo Galilei and STE-QUEST, can significantly enhance their sensitivity to ultralight scalar dark matter by incorporating the full frequency-band information.
ER -