Axion production and detection with superconducting rf cavities

Abstract

We propose a novel design of a laboratory search for axions based on photon regeneration with superconducting RF cavities. Our particular setup uses a toroid as a region of confined static magnetic field, while production and detection cavities are positioned in regions of vanishing external field. This permits cavity operation at quality factors of Q ∼ 10 10 − 10 12 . The limitations due to fundamental issues such as signal screening and back-reaction are discussed, and the optimal sensitivity is calculated. This experimental design can potentially probe axion-photon couplings beyond astrophysical limits, comparable and complementary to next generation optical experiments.

Axion dark matter detection by superconducting resonant frequency conversion

“…Different SRF setups have also been considered for production and detection of light, non-DM axions[37,38]. Another, distinct idea is the proposal of refs [39,40].…”

Axion searches with two superconducting radio-frequency cavities

“…LSW searches test the existence of the ALP as a degree of freedom, without requiring it to make up the dark matter, and are thus complementary. Our LSW proposal shares feature with [27] and [28] in which the axion is searched for irrespective of dark matter. Indeed, the axion production discussed here using two modes is similar to these works.…”

“…Several axion searches based on SRF cavities have been proposed [24][25][26][27][28] and are related to our work. In [24] and [25,26] a similar receiver cavity setup was proposed for a resonant search for axion dark matter in the GHz and the kHz range respectively and a broadband DM search was proposed in [29].…”

Microwave cavity searches for low-frequency axion dark matter

“…Looking beyond axion DM detection experiments, the more complicated cavity geometries we have discussed may be useful in other situations where large, highfrequency magnetic fields are required. For example, microwave frequency light-through-wall experiments to search for hidden sector particles, independent of whether they are DM, have been proposed [29,76], and a dark photon experiment of this form is being constructed at Fermilab [27]. The signal strength in these experiments depends on how large a field amplitude can be sustained in the driven cavity.…”

“…SRF (superconducting radio frequency) cavities have been extensively developed for particle acceleration [19]. They are also starting to be used directly in hidden sector particle searches-the Fermilab DarkSRF project [27] is constructing a dark photon detection experiment using SRF cavities, and there have been other proposals for axion detection [28,29]. For axion DM detection experiments, oscillating background magnetic fields inside SRF cavities were first proposed in [15].…”