DMUK Meeting December 2025 - University of Birmingham

Session

Morning Session 1

1 Dec 2025, 09:50

2. The QSHS axion search

Prof. Ed Daw (The University of Sheffield)

01/12/2025, 09:50

Quantum Sensors for the Hidden Sector is a UK collaboration that is probing axion dark matter. I will motivate axions as a dark matter candidate, discuss the experiement, and present an update on our project.

4. A high quality factor dielectric Fabry-Perot cavity for detecting dark matter axions

Jonathan Gosling (Imperial College London)

01/12/2025, 10:10

The axion, as well as being a proposed solution to the strong CP problem, is a well-motivated candidate for dark matter [1]. The Quantum enhanced Particle Astrophysics (QuEPA) project at Imperial College London looks to detect axions with a microwave cavity and trapped electrons. Towards this goal, a dielectric Fabry-Perot cavity has been developed as a dark matter haloscope to convert axions...

3. Quantum limited superconducting resonator amplifiers for high frequency Axion dark matter search

Dr Valerio Gilles (The University of Manchester)

01/12/2025, 10:30

Superconducting Parametric Amplifiers (SPAs) have seen great interest in recent years due to their high gain and quantum limited noise performance. Among these amplifiers, resonant SPAs have been widely developed for experiments where ultra low-noise narrow-band amplification is of interest, such as the search for Axion dark matter in particle physics and the detection of spectroscopic lines...

5. Searching for ultralight dark matter using highly charged ion clocks

Ms Mingyao Xu (Univerisity of Birmingham)

Highly charged ions (HCIs) offer exceptional prospects for next-generation optical clocks due to their suppressed sensitivity to external perturbations and their potential to probe physics beyond the Standard Model, which could help lift the veil on the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Among them, californium (Cf) ions host optical transitions with predicted ultra-narrow linewidths and...