Searching for Dark Photon Dark Matter with Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Abstract

If dark matter stems from the background of a very light gauge boson, this gauge boson could exert forces on test masses in gravitational wave detectors, resulting in displacements with a characteristic frequency set by the gauge boson mass. We outline a novel search strategy for such dark matter, assuming the dark photon is the gauge boson of U(1)B or U(1)B-L. We show that both ground-based and future space-based gravitational wave detectors have the capability to make a 5σ discovery in unexplored parameter regimes.