The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Oct 4;123(14):141802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.141802.
We propose a new strategy for searching for dark matter axions using tunable cryogenic plasmas. Unlike current experiments, which repair the mismatch between axion and photon masses by breaking translational invariance (cavity and dielectric haloscopes), a plasma haloscope enables resonant conversion by matching the axion mass to a plasma frequency. A key advantage is that the plasma frequency is unrelated to the physical size of the device, allowing large conversion volumes. We identify wire metamaterials as a promising candidate plasma, wherein the plasma frequency can be tuned by varying the interwire spacing. For realistic experimental sizes, we estimate competitive sensitivity for axion masses of 35-400 μeV, at least.
我们提出了一种使用可调谐低温等离子体搜索暗物质轴子的新策略。与目前通过破坏平移不变性（腔和介电haloscopes）来修复轴子和光子质量失配的实验不同，等离子体 haloscope 通过将轴子质量与等离子体频率匹配来实现共振转换。一个关键优势是等离子体频率与器件的物理尺寸无关，允许较大的转换体积。我们确定金属丝超材料是一种很有前途的等离子体候选材料，其中通过改变线间距可以调整等离子体频率。对于实际的实验尺寸，我们估计至少可以达到 35-400 μeV 的轴子质量的竞争灵敏度。
