Analysis method for detecting topological defect dark matter with a global magnetometer network

Understand

The Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic physics searches (GNOME) is a network of time-synchronized, geographically separated, optically pumped atomic magnetometers that is being used to search for correlated transient signals heralding exotic physics.

• GNOME is sensitive to exotic couplings of atomic spins to certain classes of dark matter candidates, such as axions.
• This work presents a data analysis procedure to search for axion dark matter in the form of topological defects: specifically, walls separating domains of discrete degenerate vacua in the axion field.
• An axion domain wall crossing the Earth creates a distinctive signal pattern in the network that can be distinguished from random noise.