Vector fuzzy dark matter, fifth forces, and binary pulsars

Abstract

We study the secular effects that an oscillating background ultralight (fuzzy) cosmological vector field has on the dynamics of binary systems; such effects appear when the field and the binary are in resonance. We first consider the gravitational interaction between the field and the systems, and quantify the main differences with an oscillating background scalar field. If the energy density of such a field is sufficiently large, as required if it is supposed to be all of the dark matter, we show that the secular effects could yield potentially observable signatures in high precision time of arrival measurements of binary pulsars. We then analyse the secular effects that arise when the field is directly coupled to the bodies in the binary. We show that this study is particularly relevant for models where fuzzy dark matter mediates a baryonic force B (or B-L, with L the lepton number), due to the stellar amount of nucleons present in the stars. The constraints we obtain from current data are already competitive with (or even more constraining than) laboratory tests of the equivalence principle.