Broadband and Resonant Approaches to Axion Dark Matter Detection

2016/02/29 by Yonatan Kahn, Benjamin R. Safdi, Jesse Thaler · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Axion #Broadband #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Magnetic field #Magnetometer #Optics #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Squid #astro-ph.CO #hep-ex #hep-ph #physics.ins-det

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.117.141801

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 141801 (2016) · 5+3 pages, 3 figures. v3: approximate version to appear in PRL. v2: Minor clarifications throughout, references added, improved discussion of pickup loop inductance and low-frequency reach, title and abstract modified to reflect complementarity of broadband/resonant strategies, conclusions unchanged

arxiv created 2016/09/27 · openalex publication_date 2016/09/30 · arxiv updated 2016/10/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

When ultralight axion dark matter encounters a static magnetic field, it sources an effective electric current that follows the magnetic field lines and oscillates at the axion Compton frequency. We propose a new experiment to detect this axion effective current. In the presence of axion dark matter, a large toroidal magnet will act like an oscillating current ring, whose induced magnetic flux can be measured by an external pickup loop inductively coupled to a SQUID magnetometer. We consider both resonant and broadband readout circuits and show that a broadband approach has advantages at small axion masses. We estimate the reach of this design, taking into account the irreducible sources of noise, and demonstrate potential sensitivity to axionlike dark matter with masses in the range of 10^-14-10^-6 eV. In particular, both the broadband and resonant strategies can probe the QCD axion with a GUT-scale decay constant.

Citations

• Calculations of resonance enhancement factor in axion-search tube-experiments
• WISPers from the Dark Side: Radio Probes of Axions and Hidden Photons
• IAXO - The International Axion Observatory
• A simple solution to the strong CP problem with a harmless axion
• Microtesla MRI with a superconducting quantum interference device
• Parity-violating interactions of cosmic fields with atoms, molecules, and nuclei: Concepts and calculations for laboratory searches and extracting limits
• The Local Dark Matter Density
• Experimental Searches for the Axion and Axion-Like Particles

Cited by

• Ferromagnetic broadband sensing of axionlike dark matter
• Searching for axion stars and Q-balls with a terrestrial magnetometer network
• Heterodyne broadband detection of axion dark matter
• More axions from strings
• Formation of relativistic axion stars
• Design and implementation of the ABRACADABRA-10 cm axion dark matter search
• High magnetic fields for fundamental physics