Conveners
Parallel 3: Axion/Sterile
- Giovanni Benato (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
Parallel 3: Axion/Sterile
- Christoph Andreas Ternes (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
Parallel 3: Light Dark Matter
- Carla Macolino (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
Parallel 3: Light Dark Matter
- Paolo Agnes (GSSI)
Parallel 3: Axion/Sterile
- Carla Macolino (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
Parallel 3: Light Dark Matter
- Carla Macolino (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
Parallel 3: Light Dark Matter
- There are no conveners in this block
The HAYSTAC experiment (Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion Cold dark matter) has operated for a decade both as a data pathfinder for the 4-12 GHz (~16-50 $\mu$eV) range, and a testbed for new resonator and amplifier technologies. Final results will be presented for Run II which incorporated a Squeezed-State Receiver to circumvent the Standard Quantum Limit, the first dark matter experiment...
The most sensitive searches for axion halo dark matter are based on the resonant conversion of axions to photons in a microwave cavity permeated by a strong magnetic field. Current and future experiments such as HAYSTAC and ALPHA seeking to reach recent predictions of the post-inflation axion of masses of 40-180 μeV (~10-45 GHz) are challenged both by the rapidly diminishing volume of...
Among the possible dark matter candidates, axions are one of the most promising. Yet, the parameter space allowed by theory is considerably unexplored. Cutting-edge calculations favor post-inflation axion mass of tens of μeV. This corresponds to roughly 10-100 GHz in frequency, too high for conventional haloscopes to reach. The Axion Longitudinal Plasma Haloscope (ALPHA) located at Yale...
The QUest for Axion (QUAX) is a direct-detection CDM axion search which reaches the sensitivity necessary for the detection of galactic QCD-axion in the range of frequency 8.5-11 GHz.
The QUAX collaboration is operating two haloscopes, located at Padova/LNL- and LNF-INFN laboratories in Italy, that work in synergy and operate in different mass ranges.
In this talk we will report about...
We report on the status of BREAD - a novel dish antenna for broadband ~$\mu$eV-eV wave-dark matter detection, which allows to utilize state-of-the-art high-field solenoidal magnets. Axions are converted non-resonantly to photons on a cylindrical metallic wall parallel to an external magnetic field. These photons are then focused using a novel reflector geometry onto a state-of-the-art...
The MAgnetized Disk and Mirror Axion eXperiment is a future experiment aiming to detect dark matter axions from the galactic halo by resonant conversion to photons in a strong magnetic field. It uses a stack of dielectric disks, called booster, to enhance the axion-photon conversion probability over a significant mass range. Several smaller scale prototype systems have been developed and used...
The QCD axion is a promising dark matter candidate whose discovery would also solve the Strong CP problem of particle physics. The DMRadio suite of experiments, which consists of DMRadio-50L, DMRadio-m$^3$, and DMRadio-GUT, are designed to be sensitive to QCD axions in the peV to $\mu$eV mass range. Axions in this mass range may be produced in the measured dark matter abundance in the early...
Quantum Sensors for the Hidden Sector is a UK collaboration developing
ultra-low-noise readout and resonant detector technology, aiming
initially to search for halo axions in the 25-40 micro-eV mass window.
The collaboration has continued to develop a range of devices and has
now installed a high-field, low-temperature facility at the University
of Sheffield, centring around a dry...
Solar axion searches with helioscopes have been ongoing for decades, with CAST (CERN axion solar telescope) being the state of the art of this kind of experiment. CAST has been running for more than 20 years. The last solar axion data taking campaign happened during 2019-2021 and is the subject of this talk. The CAST potential was boosted by using the IAXO-pathfinder system, consisting of an...
The International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a new generation axion helioscope aiming at a sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma}$ down to 10$^{-12}$ GeV$^{-1}$, i.e. 1-1.5 orders of magnitude beyond CAST, the most sensitive axion helioscope to date. The main elements of IAXO are a large superconducting toroidal magnet with eight bores, x-ray focusing optics and low background...
The NA62 experiment at CERN took data in 2016–2018 with the main goal of measuring the $K^+ \rightarrow \pi^+ \nu \bar\nu$ decay. In this talk we report on the search for visible decays of exotic mediators from data taken in "beam-dump" mode with the NA62 experiment. NA62 can be run as a ''beam-dump" experiment by removing the kaon production target and moving the upstream collimators into a...
The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is one of three Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detectors positioned along the axis of the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab, as part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program. The detector is currently being commissioned and is expected to take neutrino data this year. SBND is characterized by superb imaging capabilities...
The NEON (Neutrino Elastic-scattering Observation with NaI) experiment at the Hanbit nuclear power plant in Yeonggwang uses an array of NaI(Tl) crystals to search coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) with reactor anti-electron neutrinos. The experiment features a 16.7 kg NaI(Tl) target mass situated 23.7 meters from the reactor core and has collected physics data over a...
The KATRIN experiment is designed to measure the mass of the electron anti-neutrino by studying the high energy end of the tritium β decay spectrum. In addition, KATRIN is also a well suited instrument to explore the sterile neutrino hypothesis. The existence of sterile neutrinos would cause a kink-like distortion in the spectrum.
Using the same datasets as for active neutrino mass, KATRIN...
Direct dark matter search experiments increasingly rely on the Migdal effect, a rare atomic process, to enhance sensitivity to low-mass WIMP-like candidates. Despite its theoretical prediction in the late 1930s and subsequent observation in radioactive decays, the Migdal effect remains unobserved in nuclear scattering. The MIGDAL experiment aims to achieve the first unambiguous measurement of...
The Migdal effect associated with nuclear scattering is very important in the dark matter search. In order to experimentally verify the Migdal effect, we are searching for Migdal effect by using poistion sensitive gaseous detectors. We have two types of detector as followings: Ar detector with u-PIC readout and Xe detector with electroluminescence readout. As for the Ar detector result, we...
The WIMP hypothesis has been a leading contender, yet recent null results from WIMP searches have prompted extensive exploration of alternative possibilities, particularly focusing on sub-GeV dark matter. Given that the nuclear recoil of light dark matter falls below the threshold of conventional detectors, great efforts have focused on utilizing ionization signals to extend sensitivity in...
Various dark matter search experiments employ phonon-based crystal detectors operated at cryogenic temperatures. Some of these detectors, including HVeV detectors used by the SuperCDMS collaboration, are able to achieve single-charge sensitivity when a voltage bias is applied across the detector. The total amount of phonon energy measured by such a detector is proportional to the number of...
Direct-detection experiments seek signals generated by dark matter particles interacting with the microscopic constituents of detector materials.
In our work, we combine a non-relativistic effective theory for DM-electron interactions with the linear response theory to describe the scattering of sub-GeV DM particles in Si, Ge, Xe and Ar detectors.
Within this formalism, the detector...
If dark matter is ultralight, the number density of dark matter is very high and the techniques of zero-temperature field theory are no longer valid. The dark matter number density modifies the vacuum giving it a non-negligible particle occupation number. For fermionic dark matter, this occupation number can be no larger than one. However, in the case of bosons the occupation number is...
We argue that anti-ferromagnets (in particular, nickel oxide) are optimal targets to look for sub-MeV dark matter with spin-dependent interactions. We show how they can potentially be sensitive to dark matter as like as the keV, with nickel oxide performing an order of magnitude better than all other compounds.
We also show how a powerful theoretical tool to approach this problem is that of...
Understanding the particle nature of dark matter, which makes up approximately 85% of the matter content in the universe, remains one of the biggest open questions in the fields of particle physics and cosmology. After decades of null results in searches for weakly interacting massive dark matter candidates, experimental and theoretical efforts have shifted towards a broad range of masses,...
The ALPS II light-shining-through-walls experiment at DESY in Hamburg plans to use Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) to detect low-energy single-photons originating from axion(ALP)-photon conversion with rates as low as $10^{-5}~$s$^{-1}$. Even beyond ALPS II, these superconducting microcalorimeters, operated at cryogenic temperatures, could help search for further particle-DM candidates. Much of...
Phonon-mediated particle detectors with sub-eV threshold reach have the potential to broadly scan the increasingly theoretically relevant sub-GeV dark matter parameter space. Two technologies we consider, Kinetic Inductance Phonon-Mediated detectors (KIPMs) and a novel scheme based on quantum computing style charge qubits called Quantum Parity Detectors (QPDs), exploit superconducting material...
Low mass dark mass search has emerged as the next frontier in the direct detection experiments. In this talk, I will describe the novel idea of using transmon qubit and other mesoscale superconducting quantum devices to detect power deposition from dark matter-nucleon scattering. I will briefly describe the power deposition calculation method, and show that the exceptional sensitivity of the...
BULLKID-DM is a new experiment to search for hypothetical WIMP-like Dark-Matter particles with mass around 1 GeV/c^2 and cross-section with nucleons smaller than 10-41 cm^2. The target will amount to 600 g subdivided in 2500 silicon dice sensed by phonon-mediated kinetic inductance detectors. With respect to other solid-state experiments in the field the aim is to control the backgrounds by...
The Peccei-Quinn mechanism addresses the strong charge-parity problem in particle physics by postulating the existence of the QCD axion, a heretofore undetected particle that would interact with known particles. In particular, axion-photon coupling would enable axion-photon conversion in the presence of a magnetic field. Detecting axions requires strong magnetic fields, dense dark matter...
The QCD axion is the most robust explanation to the strong CP problem and provides a good dark matter candidate. A population of QCD axions can be produced in the early universe via scattering with SM particles, and can be searched for in cosmological datasets. I will present the state-of-the-art bound on the minimal QCD axion model by confronting momentum-dependent Boltzmann equations, from...
The coupling of axion and axion-like particles (ALPs) to two photons leads to radiative decays of axion dark matter and axion-photon conversion in an external magnetic field. We discuss two methods to search for these signals exploiting astrophysical data. The first is based on MUSE spectroscopic optical observations of a sample of five classical and ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies.
We...
Ultralight dark matter, such as axion and dark photon, in the milli-eV mass range, is notoriously difficult to detect. It is too high in frequency for high-$Q$ cavity resonators yet below the energy threshold of single-photon detectors. Our recent work (arXiv:2208.06519) showed that the cyclotron motion of trapped electrons can resonantly couple to dark photon and provide a powerful probe of...
We present the operating principle and the first results of a novel direct detector for axions and axion-like particles that is sensitive to the polarisation axis rotation of a linearly polarised laser field induced by an axion field. During its first observing run, LIDA reached a competitive sensitivity of up to 1.5 x 10^(-10) GeV^(-1) around masses of 2 neV, which coincides with predictions...
Axion and axion-like particles are leading candidates of dark matter. Axion weakly interacts with photon, electron, proton and so on. Although many experiments have been proposed by utilizing the axion-photon conversion under magnetic fields, axion has not been observed yet.
Recently, our research group has proposed Dark matter Axion search with riNg Cavity Experiment (DANCE). DANCE aims to...
QCD axions and axion-like particles are increasingly popular dark matter (DM) candidates, and experiments are closing in on the most interesting regions of parameter space. Still, even after a discovery in a haloscope, we would usually not be able to determine their local DM abundance. In this talk, I will introduce HyperLSW, a class of ambitious light-shining-through-a-wall follow-up...
The constituents of dark matter are still unknown, and the viable possibilities span a very large mass range. Specific scenarios for the origin of dark matter sharpen the focus on a narrower range of masses: the natural scenario where dark matter originates from thermal contact with familiar matter in the early Universe requires the DM mass to lie within about an MeV to 100 TeV. Considerable...
The Belle and Belle$~$II experiment have collected samples of $e^+e^-$ collision data at centre-of-mass energies near the $\Upsilon(nS)$ resonances. These data have constrained kinematics and low multiplicity, which allow searches for dark sector particles in the mass range from a few MeV to 10$~$GeV. Using a 426$~$fb$^{-1}$ sample collected by Belle$~$II, we search for a light dark photon...
The Positron Annihilation into Dark Matter Experiment (PADME) has been designed with the intention to look for a signal of a dark photon [1], but it can investigate the existence of different feebly interacting particles (FIPs) produced in the interaction of a positron beam with a thin diamond target [2]. These particles are predicted by theories beyond the Standard Model developed to address...
The TESSERACT collaboration searches for ``Light" (MeV-GeV) Dark Matter with a variety of target materials: solid state targets in the case of the SPICE experiment, and superfluid helium as a part of the HeRALD experiment. In my talk, I will give an overview of the SPICE experiment, which uses sapphire and other crystalline targets to probe multiple light dark matter models. I will show...
The TESSERACT suite of experiments will deliver sensitivity to multiple models of sub-GeV dark matter via complementary targets, including GaAs and sapphire (referred to as SPICE) and superfluid helium (referred to as HeRALD). HeRALD uses the same TES sensor technology as SPICE to read multiple signal channels from superfluid helium: prompt scintillation, rotons, and triplet excimers. I will...
DarkSide-20k, currently under construction at LNGS, is a liquid argon double-phase Time Projection Chamber designed for the direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses exceeding 10 GeV/c². In addition to its primary goal, DarkSide-20k has a significant potential for discovering light dark matter particles. Building on the success of its predecessor,...
Millicharged particles (mCPs) appear in many extensions of the standard model. They are characterized by having a fractional electric charge and can be a compelling DM candidate to solve anomalies in both particle physics and cosmology. They could be created on Earth through meson decays in accelerator facilities or through compton-like processes in nuclear reactors. Due to their small...
The electron-counting capability and low-energy threshold (~eV) of the skipper-CCDs make them sensitive to low energy interactions. Skipper-CCD experiments with active mass below 100 g searching for dark matter (DM) have achieved very low background rates, allowing them to impose world-leading limits on sub-GeV DM-electron interactions. Motivated by these results, the development of kg-size...
The invention of Skipper-CCDs with sub-electron noise paved the way for groundbreaking low-threshold dark matter (DM) experiments, such as DAMIC and SENSEI. Conventionally, these experiments are deployed underground to mitigate cosmogenic backgrounds; however, some DM signatures are inaccessible to underground experiments due to attenuation in the Earth’s atmosphere and crust. The DarkNESS...
Neutrino experiments have long been pivotal in the search for WIMP-induced signals through indirect detection. By analyzing excess neutrinos from various sources, such as the Galactic center, Sun, or Earth, beyond the atmospheric neutrino background, competitive sensitivity to WIMPs with masses as low as 1 GeV has been achieved.
Null results from WIMP searches have led innovative approaches...
The existence of dark matter is strongly supported by astronomical and cosmological observations. There are various experiments searching for dark matter with masses of 10-1000 GeV. However, it has not yet been detected.
Recently, low-mass dark matter has attracted attention as an alternative candidate. In particular, fermionic dark matter (FDM) has been proposed. FDM is absorbed by xenon...
The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is the first tonne-scale experiment using cryogenic calorimeters. The detector is located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and consists of 988 TeO2 crystals operated in a dilution refrigerator at a base temperature of about 10 mK. Thanks to the large exposure, sharp energy resolution, segmented...
The direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter interacting with nucleons is hampered by the low recoil energies induced by scatterings in the detectors. This experimental difficulty is avoided in the scenario of boosted dark matter where a component of dark matter particles is endowed with large kinetic energies. By focusing on the concept of boosted dark matter, wherein a subset of dark matter...
