Atomic Observables Induced by Cosmic Fields

Abstract

The existence of cosmic fields made from yet unknown light bosons is predicted in many extensions to the Standard Model. They are especially of interest as possible constituents of dark matter. To detect such light and weakly interacting fields, atomic precision measurements offer one of the most sensitive platforms. In this work, we derive which atomic observables are sensitive to what kind of cosmic field couplings. For this we consider fields that couple either through scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial vector, or tensor couplings. We derive the corresponding non relativistic atomic potentials. Based on their symmetry properties, these can induce direct energy shifts or induce atomic electric dipole, magnetic dipole, electric quadrupole as well as nuclear Schiff and anapole moments.