26th Australian Institute of Physics Congress and the Australian and New Zealand Conference on Optics and Photonics

Session

AIP GAP: Light Dark Matter

GAP

8 Dec 2026, 11:00

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Conveners

AIP GAP: Light Dark Matter

• Ben McAllister (Swinburne University of Technology)

314. Axion dark matter substructure

Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney)

08/12/2026, 11:00

AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP)

Invited talk

The velocity distribution of cold dark matter within galaxies is expected to exhibit ultra-fine-grained substructure as a result of the many foldings of an initially smooth phase-space sheet under gravity. The innumerable folds of this sheet in the inner regions of a galactic halo would appear on solar-system scales like an extremely large number of spatially overlapping streams of dark matter...

127. Atomic ionisation from general scattering and absorption

Narise Williams (The University of Physics)

08/12/2026, 11:30

AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP)

Contributed Oral

Accurate calculations of ionisation cross-sections are essential for constraining dark matter–electron interactions, neutrino scattering, and precision Standard Model and beyond-Standard Model (BSM) physics.
We present a generalised framework for computing ionisation cross-sections for scattering and absorption processes, fully incorporating relativistic effects and avoiding the use of the...

369. ORGAN-Low : Pathfinder Search for Sub-μeV Axion Dark Matter with the Re-entrant Haloscope Design

Raj Aryan Singh (Swinburne University of Technology)

08/12/2026, 11:45

AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP)

Contributed Oral

The QCD axion remains one of the most compelling dark matter candidates, offering a simultaneous solution to the Strong CP problem and the nature of dark matter. Axion haloscopes search for this particle through its resonant conversion into microwave photons in a strong magnetic field, but most mature experimental sensitivity has so far been concentrated at GHz frequencies. The lower-frequency...

483. Probing ultralight bosons using black holes and gravitational waves.

Aswathi Pampurayath Subhash (Australian National University)

08/12/2026, 12:00

AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP)

Contributed Oral

One of the greatest mysteries in modern physics is the nature of dark matter, which makes up most of the matter in the universe but has never been directly observed. Among the most intriguing candidates are ultralight bosons, hypothetical particles predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. These particles would interact extremely weakly with ordinary matter,...

822. Recent results from the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment

Theresa Fruth (on behalf of the LZ collaboration) (University of Sydney)

08/12/2026, 12:15

AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP)

Invited talk

LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a dark matter direct detection experiment located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. At the heart of the detector is a dual-phase time projection chamber containing 7~tonnes of active liquid xenon. With a combined exposure of 4.2~tonne-years from the first two science campaigns, LZ has placed the most stringent limits on spin-independent...