Dark matter is an elusive type of matter that does not emit, absorb or reflect light, interacting very weakly with ordinary matter. These characteristics make it impossible to detect using conventional technologies used by physicists to study matter particles.

As it has never been observed before, the exact composition of dark matter remains unknown. One proposed theory is that this elusive type of matter is comprised of light particles with very small masses, below 1 eV (electronvolt), which behave more like waves than particles.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Chuo University recently explored the possibility of searching for sub-GeV dark matter using quantum sensors, advanced systems that rely on quantum mechanical effects to detect extremely weak signals.