Speaker
Description
Atom interferometers are highly-versatile quantum sensors with applications ranging from geodesy and inertial navigation to fundamental physics studies. Differential measurements between two or more atom interferometers operated using a common laser beam offer the prospect for mid-frequency gravitational wave detection and a wide range of ultralight dark matter studies [1]. The sensitivity of such detectors scales with the length of the baseline between the interferometers, and a number of large-scale instruments are in various stages of development, including the AION project in the UK, MAGIS-100 in the USA, ZAIGA in China, MIGA in France, and VLBAI in Germany. These global efforts have also been consolidated under the umbrella of the Terrestrial Very-Long-Baseline Atom Interferometry (TVLBAI) proto-collaboration [2], which is endorsing the Atom Interferometer CERN Experiment (AICE) [3] proposal for installation of an O(100m) vertical atom interferometer in the PX46 access shaft to the LHC. AICE is intended as a facility with its main scientific objective being the search for ultralight dark matter in scalar, vector B-L, and pseudoscalar axion-like particle (ALP) channels.
[1] C. Baynham et al., Nature 654, 622–628 (2026). DOI:10.1038/s41586-026-10617-1
[2] https://tvlbai.org/
[3] C. Baynham et al., arXiv:2509.11867 [hep-ex]
| Primary Abstract Topic | Experiment: Axions and Wave-Like-DM |
|---|