2023-11-30 12:00:34
Dark matter, an omnipresent mystery in the Universe, does not reflect, emit or absorb light. This property makes it elusive by conventional experimental methods. However, it would constitute the majority of the matter in L’Universe. Physicists, for decades, have been looking for methods alternatives to detect and study it.
The Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA), bringing together researchers from various European institutes, use six radio telescopes to observe pulsars, these celestial objects emitting regular radio pulses in milliseconds. In their recent publication in Physical Review Letters, they analyzed the second wave of data collected, imposing stricter constraints on the presence of black matter ultralight in the Milky Way.
Clemente Smarra, co-author of the study, explains that their project aimed to restrict the presence of this ultralight dark matter in our galaxy. Inspired by previous work, notably that of Porayko and his collaborators, the team took advantage of a duration ofobservation longer and with increased precision to impose these new constraints.
Unlike other studies, this research assumes that the interactions of dark matter with ordinary matter occur solely through gravitational effects. Indeed, the only certainty regarding dark matter is its interaction gravitational. The idea is that dark matter creates potential well in which the radio beams of the pulsars travel, periodically modifying the travel time of these beams towards the Earth.
Pulsar Timing Arrays search for low-frequency gravitational waves by regularly observing many milliseconds search for low-frequency gravitational waves by regularly observing many millisecond pulsars and analyzing the hours arrival of their radio pulses.
photo: David Champion/Institut Max Planck de radio astronomy
Using this approach, the team was able to rule out that ultralight particles in a specific mass range make up all of dark matter. Their work demonstrates that particles with masses between 10-24.0 eV and 10-23.3 eV can only constitute up to 0.3 GeV/cm3 of the density local dark matter. These results pave the way for further research in this complex area.
Currently, Clemente Smarra plans to further explore the signatures that pulsars might reveal on dark matter. He is also interested in the astrophysical modeling of binary supermassive black hole systems, which might explain the recently observed stochastic gravitational wave background.
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