Direct limits on the interaction of antiprotons with axion-like dark matter

Understand

Astrophysical observations indicate that there is roughly five times more dark matter in the Universe than ordinary baryonic matter, with an even larger amount of the Universe's energy content due to dark energy.

• So far, the microscopic properties of these dark components have remained shrouded in mystery.
• In addition, even the five percent of ordinary matter in our Universe has yet to be understood, since the Standard Model of particle physics lacks any consistent explanation for the predominance of matter over antimatter.
• Inspired by these central problems of modern physics, we present here a direct search for interactions of antimatter with dark matter, and place direct constraints on the interaction of ultra-light axion-like particles $-$ one of the dark-matter candidates $-$ and antiprotons.