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Poster Session

Poster Session I (4pm-6pm CDT)

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, Tuesday June 4 Session D00
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GPS.ELF: Update on the search for exotic low-mass field emission from the binary neutron star merger (GW170817) using GPS atomic clocks

Poster 126
Presenter: Arko P Sen (University of Nevada, Reno, USA)
Authors: Kalia Pfeffer (John Hopkins University, USA), Colin Bradley (California Department of Public Health, USA), Conner Dailey (University of Waterloo, Canada), Andrey Sarantsev (University of Nevada, Reno, USA), Paul Ries (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA), Geoffrey Blewitt (University of Nevada, Reno, USA), Andrei Derevianko (University of Nevada, Reno, USA)
Collaboration: University of Nevada, Reno; Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA); California Institute of Technology; University of Waterloo, Canada; John Hopkins University; California Department of Public Health.

Exotic low-mass fields (ELF) are plausible dark matter candidates appearing as potential solutions to the strong-CP and hierarchy problems. Powerful astrophysical events, such as binary neutron star and binary black hole mergers can potentially emit ELFs which leads to an intriguing possibility for a novel, exotic physics, modality in multi-messenger astronomy [Nature Astronomy 5, 150 (2021)]. In our ELF search, we use the data from atomic clocks of the Global Positioning System (GPS) making it a quantum sensor network. It is expected that ELFs imprint an anti-chirp transient across the GPS sensor network. Our search targets the August 17, 2017 GW170817 binary neutron star merger event detected by LIGO. The search is carried out by comparing the clock excess noise before and after the LIGO gravitational wave trigger. We present the progress of our search for such feebly interacting ELFs using three days of data for clock excess noise comparison. We found an intriguing excess in the clock noise post LIGO gravitational wave trigger. Potentially the excess noise could be explained away by the increased solar electron flux on August 17, 2017. While analysing the data we discovered anomalies in Block II-F GPS satellite clocks that may degrade their suitability as sensors of exotic physics.

Funding acknowledgement

Supported in part by the Heising-Simons Foundation and NSF.

POSTERS (157)