Searching for the Needle in the HAYSTAC: Current Status of Axion Dark Matter Searches

  • Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars

September 10, 2024 2:00 PM - September 3, 2024 3:00 PM
PAIS 3205

Host:
Dinesh Loomba
Presenter:
Dr. Alex Leder (LANL)
The field of direct Dark Matter (DM) detection has in recent years grown not just in terms of the scale of experiments that search for DM, but also looking at a wider array of possible DM candidates. One such candidate, the axion, originally conceived to solve a problem in QCD has become an increasingly interesting DM alternative to classic WIMP DM searches. However; in order to probe the largely unexplored axion parameter space across multiple frequency decades, new experimental techniques are required. The HAYSTAC (Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion Cold dark matter) experiment is a tunable microwave cavity experiment searching for axions, which also serves as an R&D testbed for new technologies in the 10-50 𝜇eV mass range. In addition, new LC resonant searches such as the DM Radio family of experiments are opening up mass ranges below 20 neV.  In this talk, I will review recent and upcoming science results from HAYSTAC, as well as the new resonator and receiver technologies under development on HAYSTAC and DM Radio. In addition, I will discuss some indirect radio astronomy searches that offer the ability to quickly probe large swaths of interesting dark matter parameter space in order to offer a multi-pronged approach to scanning through all the unexplored axionic parameter space.  

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