2026-07-16 中国科学院（CAS）
Artistic rendering of pulsar timing array probing ultralight dark matter. (Image by SHAO)
＜関連情報＞
- https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research-news/202607/t20260716_1178511.shtml
- https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/wff3-b1fs
PPTA DR3およびEPTA DR2による超軽量スカラーおよびダークフォトン暗黒物質に対する制約 Constraints on ultralight scalar and dark photon dark matter from PPTA DR3 and EPTA DR2
Xiao-Song Hu, Siyuan Chen, Kuo Liu, Xingjiang Zhu, Shi-Yi Zhao, Wu Jiang, John Antoniadis, N. D. Ramesh Bhat, Amodio Carleo et al.
Physical Review D Published: 8 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wff3-b1fs
Abstract
The cold dark matter model successfully describes the Universe on large scales, yet faces challenges at subgalactic scales. Ultralight dark matter (ULDM), with particle masses around 10−22 eV, offers a promising solution to these small-scale issues. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), designed to detect nanohertz gravitational waves, can also provide a sensitive probe for ULDM signals. In this work, we perform a Bayesian search for ULDM using PTA datasets, focusing on two types of signals: the oscillatory gravitational potential from scalar ULDM and the fifth-force interaction mediated by dark photon dark matter (DPDM). We incorporate pulsar distances in the analysis to better model the ULDM density. No statistically significant evidence for ULDM has been found; therefore, we place 95% confidence level upper limits on the relevant parameters. For scalar ULDM, our analysis does not exclude the scenario in which ULDM constitutes all of dark matter. The constraints from PPTA-DR3 show significant improvements over the earlier PPTA-DR2 (2018 Preview) across most of the mass range, and are consistent with the recent uncorrelated limits from other PTAs. We also present for the first time the DPDM constraints using EPTA data. The obtained bounds on the DPDM from the EPTA-DR2 and PPTA-DR3 are comparable to existing constraints.
