- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Stringent constraints on gravitational wave signatures of dark electromagnetism in neutron star binaries

Ian Harris1,2,* and Yonatan Kahn3,†

  • *Contact author: ianwh2@illinois.edu
  • †Contact author: yf.kahn@utoronto.ca
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055008 – Published 3 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/92sp-sshj

Abstract

Gravitational wave interferometers have studied compact object mergers and solidified our understanding of strong gravity. Their increasing precision raises the possibility of detecting new physics, especially in a neutron star binary system that may contain hidden-sector particles. In particular, a new vector force between binary constituents, giving rise to dark electromagnetic phenomena, could measurably alter the inspiral waveforms and thus be constrained by gravitational wave observations. In this work, we critically examine the mechanisms for neutron stars to acquire enough hidden-sector particles with requisite couplings to furnish a detectable signature from dark electromagnetism. In particular, we explore three plausible mechanisms for achieving a sufficient dark mass fraction, and we derive quite general limitations on the amount of charge that can be accumulated by any of these mechanisms. We demonstrate that the repulsive nature of vector forces imposes stringent constraints on any putative particle physics model or astrophysical environment which could give rise to such gravitational signatures. We argue that absent an extreme fine-tuning of parameters, such signatures are well out of reach of any current or near-future gravitational wave observatory.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (75)

  1. D. S. Akerib et al., in Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier Dark Matter Direct Detection to the Neutrino Fog (2022), https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1862264.
  2. R. Essig et al., in Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier: The landscape of low-threshold dark matter direct detection in the next decade (2022), https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1862251.
  3. A. Drlica-Wagner et al., Report of the topical group on cosmic probes of dark matter for snowmass 2021, Technical Report No. FERMILAB-FN-1211-PPD, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2022, arXiv:2209.08215.
  4. M. Battaglieri et al., arXiv:1707.04591.
  5. M. Cirelli, A. Strumia, and J. Zupan, arXiv:2406.01705.
  6. I. Goldman and S. Nussinov, Phys. Rev. D 40, 3221 (1989).
  7. N. F. Bell, G. Busoni, S. Robles, and M. Virgato, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 09 (2020) 028.
  8. N. F. Bell, G. Busoni, S. Robles, and M. Virgato, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 03 (2021) 086.
  9. W. DeRocco, M. Galanis, and R. Lasenby, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2022) 015.
  10. G. Busoni, Moscow Univ. Phys. Bull. 77, 301 (2022).
  11. C. Kouvaris and P. Tinyakov, Phys. Rev. D 82, 063531 (2010).
  12. A. de Lavallaz and M. Fairbairn, Phys. Rev. D 81, 123521 (2010).
  13. A. E. Nelson, S. Reddy, and D. Zhou, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2019) 012.
  14. R. K. Leane, T. Linden, P. Mukhopadhyay, and N. Toro, Phys. Rev. D 103, 075030 (2021).
  15. P. Arvikar, S. Gautam, A. Venneti, and S. Banik, Phys. Rev. D 112, 023021 (2025).
  16. D. Rafiei Karkevandi, S. Shakeri, V. Sagun, and O. Ivanytskyi, in The Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting (World Scientific, Singapore, 2023), pp. 3713–3731, 10.1142/9789811269776_0307.
  17. J. Ellis, G. Hütsi, K. Kannike, L. Marzola, M. Raidal, and V. Vaskonen, Phys. Rev. D 97, 123007 (2018).
  18. R. Ciancarella, F. Pannarale, A. Addazi, and A. Marcianò, Phys. Dark Universe 32, 100796 (2021).
  19. T. Gleason, B. Brown, and B. Kain, Phys. Rev. D 105, 023010 (2022).
  20. C. V. Flores, C. H. Lenzi, M. Dutra, O. Lourenço, and J. D. V. Arbañil, Phys. Rev. D 109, 083021 (2024).
  21. H. C. Das, A. Kumar, S. K. Biswal, and S. K. Patra, Phys. Rev. D 104, 123006 (2021).
  22. S. Shirke, B. K. Pradhan, D. Chatterjee, L. Sagunski, and J. Schaffner-Bielich, Phys. Rev. D 110, 063025 (2024).
  23. J. F. Acevedo, J. Bramante, R. K. Leane, and N. Raj, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 03 (2020) 038.
  24. R. Garani, A. Gupta, and N. Raj, Phys. Rev. D 103, 043019 (2021).
  25. A. Ávila, E. Giangrandi, V. Sagun, O. Ivanytskyi, and C. Providência, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 528, 6319 (2024).
  26. N. F. Bell, G. Busoni, S. Robles, and M. Virgato, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2024) 006.
  27. M. Colpi, S. L. Shapiro, and I. Wasserman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 2485 (1986).
  28. S. Alexander, E. McDonough, R. Sims, and N. Yunes, Classical Quantum Gravity 35, 235012 (2018).
  29. N. Rutherford, G. Raaijmakers, C. Prescod-Weinstein, and A. Watts, Phys. Rev. D 107, 103051 (2023).
  30. D. Rafiei Karkevandi, S. Shakeri, V. Sagun, and O. Ivanytskyi, Phys. Rev. D 105, 023001 (2022).
  31. L. Cong, W. Ji, P. Fadeev, F. Ficek, M. Jiang, V. V. Flambaum, H. Guan, D. F. J. Kimball, M. G. Kozlov, Y. V. Stadnik, and D. Budker, Rev. Mod. Phys. 97, 025005 (2025).
  32. C. Jockel, Scalar- and vector dark matter admixed neutron stars, Master’s thesis, Goethe Universität, 2023, https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.12174.
  33. C. B. Owen, A. Tucker, Y. Kahn, and N. Yunes, Phys. Rev. D 111, 124042 (2025).
  34. J. Kopp, R. Laha, T. Opferkuch, and W. Shepherd, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2018) 096.
  35. B. P. Abbott et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 161101 (2017).
  36. N. Yunes and F. Pretorius, Phys. Rev. D 80, 122003 (2009).
  37. N. Cornish, L. Sampson, N. Yunes, and F. Pretorius, Phys. Rev. D 84, 062003 (2011).
  38. N. Yunes, K. Yagi, and F. Pretorius, Phys. Rev. D 94, 084002 (2016).
  39. N. F. Bell, G. Busoni, and S. Robles, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 09 (2018) 018.
  40. M. McCullough and L. Randall, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 10 (2013) 058.
  41. G. Alonso-Álvarez, D. Curtin, A. Rasovic, and Z. Yuan, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2024) 069.
  42. P. Agrawal, F.-Y. Cyr-Racine, L. Randall, and J. Scholtz, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2017) 022.
  43. M. Kaplinghat, S. Tulin, and H.-B. Yu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 041302 (2016).
  44. P. W. Graham, H. Ramani, O. Simon, and E. H. Tanin, arXiv:2511.09614.
  45. P. Giffin, A. Liu, J. Boucsein, A. Cruz, A. Prabhu, S. Profumo, and M. G. Roberts, arXiv:2511.15810.
  46. A. Cruz and M. McQuinn, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2023) 028.
  47. W. DeRocco and P. Giffin, Phys. Rev. D 111, 095031 (2025).
  48. D. E. Kaplan, G. Z. Krnjaic, K. R. Rehermann, and C. M. Wells, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2010) 021.
  49. J. Fan, A. Katz, L. Randall, and M. Reece, Phys. Dark Universe 2, 139 (2013).
  50. E. Braaten, D. Kang, and R. Laha, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2018) 084.
  51. S. Tulin and H.-B. Yu, Phys. Rep. 730, 1 (2018).
  52. H. Beauchesne and Y. Kats, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2021) 160.
  53. J. Gurian, D. Jeong, M. Ryan, and S. Shandera, Astrophys. J. 934, 121 (2022).
  54. S. Roy, X. Shen, J. Barron, M. Lisanti, D. Curtin, N. Murray, and P. F. Hopkins, Astrophys. J. 982, 175 (2025).
  55. L. Posti and A. Helmi, Astron. Astrophys. 621, A56 (2019).
  56. D. Merritt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 201304 (2004).
  57. G. Bertone and D. Merritt, Phys. Rev. D 72, 103502 (2005).
  58. L. Sadeghian, F. Ferrer, and C. M. Will, Phys. Rev. D 88, 063522 (2013).
  59. G. Bertone, A. R. A. Wierda, D. Gaggero, B. J. Kavanagh, M. Volonteri, and N. Yoshida, Phys. Rev. D 112, 043537 (2025).
  60. F. Scarcella and B. J. Kavanagh, arXiv:2510.11635.
  61. M. Milosavljevic, D. Merritt, A. Rest, and F. C. van den Bosch, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 331, L51 (2002).
  62. S. Ravindranath, L. C. Ho, and A. V. Filippenko, Astrophys. J. 566, 801 (2002).
  63. N. Khonji, A. Gualandris, J. I. Read, and W. Dehnen, Astrophys. J. 974, 204 (2024).
  64. I. T. Nasim, A. Gualandris, J. I. Read, F. Antonini, W. Dehnen, and M. Delorme, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 502, 4794 (2021).
  65. A. S. Ilyin, K. P. Zybin, and A. V. Gurevich, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 98, 1 (2004).
  66. O. Y. Gnedin and J. R. Primack, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 061302 (2004).
  67. J. A. Dror, R. Lasenby, and M. Pospelov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 141803 (2017).
  68. J. A. Dror, R. Lasenby, and M. Pospelov, Phys. Rev. D 96, 075036 (2017).
  69. T. A. Wagner, S. Schlamminger, J. H. Gundlach, and E. G. Adelberger, Classical Quantum Gravity 29, 184002 (2012).
  70. J. Bergé, M. Pernot-Borràs, J.-P. Uzan, P. Brax, R. Chhun, G. Métris, M. Rodrigues, and P. Touboul, Classical Quantum Gravity 39, 204010 (2022).
  71. D. J. Kapner, T. S. Cook, E. G. Adelberger, J. H. Gundlach, B. R. Heckel, C. D. Hoyle, and H. E. Swanson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 021101 (2007).
  72. D. McKeen, A. E. Nelson, S. Reddy, and D. Zhou, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 061802 (2018).
  73. J. M. Cline and J. M. Cornell, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2018) 081.
  74. B. Grinstein, C. Kouvaris, and N. G. Nielsen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 091601 (2019).
  75. M. Bastero-Gil, T. Huertas-Roldan, and D. Santos, Phys. Rev. D 110, 083003 (2024).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055008– Published 3 March, 2026
  • Received 15 December 2025
  • Accepted 11 February 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation