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MSC Seminars
Search for Relic Axions in High Magnetic Field at CERN
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Europe/Zurich
30/7-010 (CERN)
Description
Abstract
There has been an increasing interest in searches for the axion, particularly over the past few years. Technology advances, and the development of new ideas, might in fact soon lead to experiments with unprecedented sensitivity over a mass range, roughly 1 to 100 μeV, where a discovery could solve two outstanding issues of modern physics, namely the so-called Strong CP problem and the nature of cold dark matter (DM). The IBS Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research (CAPP/IBS)[1], based at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), was established with the goal to address the Strong CP problem, the axion resolution of it, and the proton electric dipole moment value. As part of its international collaborative efforts, the CAPP leads an experiment at CERN, the CAST-CAPP/IBS project, within the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) [2] collaboration. Axions can couple to two photons in the presence of a strong magnetic field, B, as expressed by the Lagrangian term
L= 〖-g〗_aγγ a(t)E(t)∙B
Where gaγγ is the coupling constant, a(t) is the axion field, and E(t) the electric field associated with the outgoing photon in this Primakov-like process. This coupling is the base of the CAPP axion search, in the version proposed by Sikivie [3] where a microwave cavity immersed in a strong magnetic field is tuned to resonate at the frequency of the axion mass (haloscope). In the CAST-CAPP/IBS project, based on ideas suggested a few years ago [4], rectangular cavities are inserted in the 9T CAST dipole magnet, an LHC prototype, at CERN. The status and expected sensitivity of this experiment will be presented.
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[1] http://capp.ibs.re.kr/html/capp_en/
[2] CAST Collaboration, K. Zioutas et al., Phy. Rev. Lett. 94 (2005) 121301.
[3] P. Sikivie, Phys. Rev. Lett. 51, 1415 (1983).
[4] O. Baker et al., Phys. Rev. D85, 035018 (2012).