Our Hunt for Dark Matter Published in Nature Communications!

We are thrilled to announce a new publication in Nature Communications from Prof. Pustelny’s group in our Department. This collaborative effort, carried out with the team of Prof. Dmitry Budker in Mainz, Germany, pushes the frontiers in the search for one of the Universe’s most profound mysteries – dark matter.

A Quantum Leap in Detection

At the heart of our research is the search for elusive, ultralight bosons known as axion-like particles (ALPs), which are leading candidates for hypothetical dark matter. To detect them, we built a novel device: a massive interferometer constructed from the two most sensitive quantum spin sensors to date – the so-called alkali-noble gas comagnetometers. By synchronizing our device, operating in Kraków, with its counterpart in Mainz, we effectively created a nearly 1,000-kilometer-long detector to search for the faint, coherent ripples that a dark-matter field would produce on Earth.

New Limits on the Invisible Universe

While the experiment did not detect a definitive signal from ALPs, the results mark a significant step forward in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. The unprecedented sensitivity of our continental-scale setup has allowed us to set new limits on the potential interactions of these hypothetical particles with neutrons, protons, and electrons.

Our search spanned an incredible nine orders of magnitude in possible particle mass. For certain mass ranges, our constraints are up to 1,000 times more stringent than those of any previous laboratory experiment. In the global search for dark matter, not finding anything is itself a powerful result; it reveals where the elusive particles are not hiding and helps narrow the search for future experiments.

Read the full publication here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60178-6