Speaker
Description
The axion is a well-motivated dark matter candidate that was originally proposed to solve the Strong CP problem. The talk presents the development of a dielectric Fabry-Perot cavity haloscope within the Imperial College Quantum enhanced Particle Astrophysics (QuEPA) project. Our approach is optimised to search for axion dark matter in the 125–250 µeV mass range (30–60 GHz) via photon conversion. Our Fabry-Perot cavity design offers a high quality factor (Q) in its fundamental TEM mode and a large mode volume, while the all-dielectric construction means Q does not degrade in a strong magnetic field. These features significantly boost the detection sensitivity over cylindrical cavities in this mass range, in a simple and compact design. We have constructed and tested a 50 mm diameter prototype whose performance validates our chosen approach.