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Is the conventional picture of coherence time complete? Dark matter recoherence from substructures

Chaitanya Paranjape*, Gilad Perez†, Wolfram Ratzinger‡, and Somasundaram Sankaranarayanan§

  • *Contact author: chaitanya.paranjape@weizmann.ac.il
  • †Contact author: gilad.perez@weizmann.ac.il
  • ‡Contact author: wolfram.ratzinger@weizmann.ac.il
  • §Contact author: somasundaram.sankaranarayanan@weizmann.ac.il
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 095013 – Published 6 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fspm-jw37

Abstract

The local solar gravitational potential forms a basin for ultralight dark matter (ULDM) with discrete energy levels. Even if barely populated, it introduces a new characteristic timescale in DM dynamics. This necessitates a generalization of the notion of coherence time. We find that, at long times, the phenomenon of “recoherence” emerges, whereby a subcomponent of ULDM exhibits a formally divergent coherence time. The fact that this generalized coherence time can significantly exceed the naive estimate implies an enhanced sensitivity for dark matter searches that accumulate data over extended observation periods.

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Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 114, 095013– Published 6 November, 2026
  • Received 19 March 2026
  • Accepted 1 October 2026
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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.

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