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arXiv:2603.23337

Dark Matter Detection through Rydberg Atom Transducer

J. F. Chen, Haokun Fu, Christina Gao, Jing Shu, Geng-Bo Wu, Peiran Yin, Yi-Ming Zhong, Ying Zuo

hep-phastro-ph.COhep-exphysics.atom-phquant-phSubmitted Mar 24, 2026• Announced Mar 25, 2026
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ultralight bosonic dark matter with masses in the meV range, corresponding to terahertz (THz) Compton frequencies, remains largely unexplored due to the difficulty of achieving both efficient signal conversion and single-photon-sensitive detection at THz frequencies. We propose a hybrid detection architecture that integrates a dielectric haloscope, Rydberg-atom transducer, and superconducting nanowire single-photon detection within a unified cryogenic platform operating at $\lesssim 1\,\text{K}$. The dielectric haloscope converts dark matter into THz photons via phase-matched resonant enhancement, achieving form factors $C \sim 0.4$ and loaded quality factors $Q_L \sim 10^4$. A cold $^{87}$Rb ensemble then coherently up-converts the THz signal to the optical domain through six-wave mixing among Rydberg states. The intrinsic directionality and narrow bandwidth ($Δν_{\mathrm{atomic}} \sim 1\,\text{MHz}$) of this process provide extra suppression of isotropic thermal backgrounds. With 10 days of integration at $0.3\,\text{K}$, we project sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling $g_{aγγ} \sim 10^{-13}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ at $m_a \sim 0.4\,\text{meV}$, reaching the QCD axion band and opening the THz window for searches of both axion and dark photon dark matter.

Comments
12 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables

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Single-photon terahertz (THz) detection is one of the most demanding technologies for a variety of fields and could lead to many breakthroughs. Although significant progress has been made in the past two decades, operating it at room temperature still remains a great challenge. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, a room temperature THz detector at single-photon levels based on nonlinear wave mixing in thermal Rydberg atomic vapor. The low-energy THz photons are coherently upconverted to high-energy optical photons via a nondegenerate Rydberg state involved in a six-wave mixing process, and therefore, single-photon THz detection is achieved by a conventional optical single-photon counting module. The noise equivalent power of such a detector reaches 9.5 × 10−19 W/Hz1/2, which is more than four orders of magnitude lower than the state-of-the-art room temperature THz detectors. The optimum quantum efficiency of the whole-wave mixing process is about 4.3%, with 40.6 dB dynamic range, and the maximum conversion bandwidth is 172 MHz, which is all-optically controllable. The developed fast and continuous-wave single-photon THz detector at room temperature operation has a great potential for portability and chip-scale integration, and could be revolutionary for a wide range of applications in remote sensing, wireless communication, biomedical diagnostics, and quantum optics.
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Many well-motivated dark matter models predict meV-scale energy deposits in interactions with terrestrial experiments, but this regime is challenging to probe due to a lack of mature single-quantum detectors. Here we report results from QUALIPHIDE (QUAntum LImited PHotons In the Dark Experiment), a cryogenic dark matter search using a 414141-pixel array of energy-resolving microwave kinetic inductance detectors with a 131313 meV threshold, simultaneously used to look for both conversion photons from THz wavelength hidden photon dark matter and phonons from particle-like light dark matter interactions. The experimental design, with on- and off-focus pixels for the hidden photon search, allows for a data-driven background model, giving the experiment discovery potential. A blind analysis of 222222 hours of data shows no significant excess, setting the strongest constraints on the hidden photon kinetic mixing parameter χχχ over the mass range of 131313-909090 meV/c2c^2c2, reaching 1.5×10−121.5\times10^{-12}1.5×10−12 at 505050 meV/c2c^2c2. These data also yield among the first terrestrial limits on dark matter scattering off nuclei and electrons, down to 555 MeV/c2c^2c2 and 202020 keV/c2c^2c2, respectively. The low threshold also enables future study of the low-energy excess limiting cryogenic detectors and, as we project, will allow for a terahertz-scale QCD axion search with a magnetic field.