Constraining ultralight oscillators with atomic clocks

by Nathaniel Sherrill (University of Sussex)

Thursday 11 May 2023, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Copenhagen

Aud A

There will be a student session at 13:10 before the main talk.

Abstract: If an ultralight field couples to the standard model the dimensionless constants of nature can vary as a function of spacetime. Detecting these variations may be possible by utilising the exceptional sensitivity of atomic clocks. Temporal variations of the fine-structure constant and electron-to-proton mass ratio have been probed on the order of a minute to almost a day using strontium, ytterbium and caesium clock-transition data collected by the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. These data translate to model-independent constraints on scalar-SM couplings, and models of ultralight scalar and axion-like dark matter.

Copenhagen_2023.pdf