Heterodyne Detection of Axion Dark Matter

PIRSA ID: 21050019
Event Type: Seminar
Scientific Area(s):
Particle Physics
End date:
Speaker(s):
  • Asher Berlin, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Detecting ultralight axion dark matter has recently become one of the benchmark goals of future direct detection experiments. I will discuss a new idea to detect such particles whose mass is well below the micro-eV scale, corresponding to Compton wavelengths much greater than the typical size of tabletop experiments. The approach involves detecting axion-induced transitions between two quasi-degenerate resonant modes of a superconducting accelerator cavity. Compared to more traditional setups, the sensitivity is parametrically enhanced for ultralight axions, allowing for the exploration of vast new areas of parameter space relevant to the QCD axion and astrophysically long-ranged fuzzy dark matter.