Physics Department Colloquia |
Events on Friday, February 19th, 2016
- Searching for Dark Matter with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Kent Irwin, Stanford/SLAC
- Abstract: For several decades, Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) have played an important role in searching for the mysterious dark matter that makes up about 85% of the matter in the universe. SQUIDs have been used in both direct searches for dark matter and in CMB experiments used to constrain the dark matter annihilation cross section. I describe the historical role that SQUIDs have played in direct-detection WIMP experiments, CMB dark-matter detection experiments, and more recently in searches for pseudoscalar axion dark matter. I then describe an experiment that we are now constructing to search for ultralight vector-boson dark matter ("hidden photons") with a lumped-element resonator, essentially a radio for dark matter detection. In its ultimate implementation, this experimental campaign will ultimately exclude or detect hidden-photon dark matter over six orders of magnitude in coupling - down to mixing angles of 10^-17 - and nine orders of magnitude in mass (from 100 Hz to 700 GHz). I describe the design of this experiment and challenges to achieving its ultimate science reach.
- Host: Kam Arnold