Could nuclear clocks help detect dark matter or variations in fundamental constants?

Lens adapted to this topic: Proposed nuclear-sector signals and their limits

The strongest outsider-to-mainstream emphasis is that dark matter may couple chiefly to the nuclear or strong-interaction sector, where conventional optical clocks have weaker reach. Nuclear and molecular comparisons could therefore reveal signals missed by atomic systems, although the proposal remains model-dependent and sensitivity calculations do not constitute a detection.

• Some ultralight-dark-matter models predict dominant coupling to nuclear-sector parameters, making nuclear-sensitive comparisons more informative than purely electronic clock tests.
• Mössbauer and thorium-229 transitions can be highly sensitive to quark-mass or strong-interaction-scale changes; the cited work reports a large thorium-229 quark-mass enhancement factor.
• Correlating molecular and atomic clocks offers a complementary route because vibrational molecular transitions and electronic transitions respond differently to nuclear-parameter changes.
• The proposed reach extends to extremely weak couplings or very high suppression scales, including scenarios associated with the Planck scale, but these are projections rather than observed effects.

Featured source[2112.13195] Effects of variation of the fine structure constant 𝛼 and quark mass 𝑚_𝑞 in Mössbauer nuclear transitionsar5iv.labs.arxiv.org3 sourcesView sources