Conveners
Parallel: Dark Matter 2
- Jia Liu (Peking University)
The axion is a well-motivated hypothetical particle resulting from the Peccei-Quinn mechanism, which is an elegant solution to the strong $CP$ problem of quantum chromodynamics. Because of its nature, abundance in the Universe, and extremely weak coupling, it is also considered a promising candidate for dark matter, another big mystery of the Universe. Among many experimental techniques to...
Superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) technology has played an essential role in advancing precision measurements in particle physics experiments, over the past decades, and is expected to be so in the search for dark matter axions. The axion haloscope requires high quality (Q) factor superconducting cavities immersed in multi-tesla magnetic fields for sensitive searches, which can be achieved...
Quantum devices with ultrahigh sensitivities are being designed for various purposes ranging from developing quantum computers to building powerful telescopes. Typically, they use the sharp transition between superconducting and normal states of matter to detect small energy deposition. Such devices have also been used in direct detection experiments for light dark matter. I will talk about a...
The direct detection of light (sub-MeV) dark matter presents a significant challenge due to the need for sub-eV energy thresholds. I will discuss a new proposal to use a superfluid helium optomechanical cavity to search for dark matter in the keV mass range. In this regime, dark matter scattering excites a single phonon in the superfluid helium target. Optomechanical systems have demonstrated...
Electric charge quantization is a long-standing question in particle physics. While fractionally charged particles (millicharged particles hereafter) have typically been thought to preclude the possibility of Grand Unified Theories (GUTs), well-motivated dark-sector models have been proposed to predict the existence of millicharged particles while preserving the possibility for unification....
