Constraints on dark photon dark matter using data from LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run

We present a search for dark photon dark matter that could couple to gravitational-wave interferometersusing data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run. To perform this analysis, we use twomethods, one based on cross-correlation of the strain channels in the two nearly aligned LIGO detectors,and one that looks for excess power in the strain channels of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. The excesspower method optimizes the Fourier transform coherence time as a function of frequency, to account for theexpected signal width due to Doppler modulations. We do not find any evidence of dark photon dark matterwith a mass between $m_A ~10^{-14}-10^{-11} eV/c^2$, which corresponds to frequencies between 10–2000 Hz,and therefore provide upper limits on the square of the minimum coupling of dark photons to baryons, i.e.,$U(1)_B$ dark matter. For the cross-correlation method, the best median constraint on the squared coupling is$~1.31\times10^{-47}$ at $m_A~4.2\times10^{-13}eV/c^2$; for the other analysis, the best constraint is $~2.4\times10^{47}$ at $m_A~5.7\times10^{-13}eV/c2$. These limits improve upon those obtained in direct dark matter detectionexperiments by a factor of ∼100 for $m_A~[2-4]\times10^{-13}eV/c^2$, and are, in absolute terms, the moststringent constraint so far in a large mass range $m_A~2\times10^{-13}-8\times10^{-12}eV/c^2$.