8 November 2025
Northwestern University Technological Institute
America/Chicago timezone

A Quantum Description of Axion Dark Matter Detection

8 Nov 2025, 10:15
15m
Tech L211 (Northwestern University Technological Institute)

Tech L211

Northwestern University Technological Institute

2145 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60208

Speaker

Dhong Yeon Cheong (University of Chicago)

Description

In this talk, I will present a unified quantum framework for axion dark matter detection. Drawing on a quantum-optics-inspired formalism, we describe realistic axion dark matter detection schemes through a density matrix and a corresponding quasi-probability distribution. We show that the intrinsically quantum nature of the dark matter field will remain unobservable with current or foreseeable technology due to mode averaging and extremely low conversion efficiency. Our results exemplify why the classical-field treatment of wave dark matter remains both accurate and sufficient for present searches, and also provides a general method to compute effects arising from dark matter states.

Authors

Presentation materials