Speaker
Description
We have recently initiated a project to develop a pathfinding experiment based on a new detection concept [1] to explore ultralight axion dark matter within a completely uninvestigated mass range near 10 neV. Our approach integrates a low-temperature resonant inductor-capacitor (LC) circuit with a state-of-the-art optical quantum sensor (OQS) to detect a “smoking-gun” signal: a tiny axion-induced oscillating magnetic field. We anticipate that this experiment would improve current sensitivities to the axion signal strength by approximately 5 orders of magnitude. The OQS is the most sensitive cryogen-free magnetic-field sensor, which manipulates atomic spins in an alkali-metal vapor cell via laser-driven optical pumping and probing. Because it operates at ambient temperatures, it eliminates the need for expensive cryogens and complex cryogenic infrastructure. We are currently constructing and optimizing a potassium-based OQS that targets a fundamental quantum field noise well below fT/Hz$^{1/2}$ at MHz frequencies. In this talk, we present our LC circuit-OQS axion detection concept and our recent progress on the construction of the potassium OQS.
[1] Y. J. Kim, L. Duffy, I. Savukov, and P.-H. Chu, “Sensitivity of ultralight axion dark matter search with optical quantum sensors,” Physical Review D 108, 052007 (2023).
We acknowledge this work was supported by Quantum Information Science Enabled Discovery 2.0 (QuantISED 2.0) for the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics (DE-FOA-0003354)