2024/12/14 by Fierlinger, Peter, Sheng, Jie, Stadnik, Yevgeny V. +1
#Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.10832
We propose a novel detection method for axion dark matter using the Rabi oscillation of neutron spins in beam-based measurements. If axions couple to neutron spins, a background oscillating axion dark matter field would drive transitions between spin-up and spin-down neutron states in a magnetic field when the axion particle energy matches the energy gap between the spin states. The transition can be detected in a double-Stern-Gerlach-type apparatus, with the first splitter producing a pure spin-polarized neutron beam and the second splitter selecting spin-flipped signals. Our approach offers enhanced detection capability for axions within the 10-12 - 10-10 eV mass window with the capability to surpass the sensitivity of current laboratory experiments.