Axion dark matter detection by superconducting resonant frequency conversion
Asher Berlin, Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo, Sebastian A. R. Ellis, Christopher Nantista, Jeffrey Neilson, Philip Schuster, Sami Tantawi, Natalia Toro, Kevin Zhou
Abstract
A bstract We propose an approach to search for axion dark matter with a specially designed superconducting radio frequency cavity, targeting axions with masses m a ≲ 10 − 6 eV. Our approach exploits axion-induced transitions between nearly degenerate resonant modes of frequency ∼ GHz. A scan over axion mass is achieved by varying the frequency splitting between the two modes. Compared to traditional approaches, this allows for parametrically enhanced signal power for axions lighter than a GHz. The projected sensitivity covers unexplored parameter space for QCD axion dark matter for 10 − 8 eV ≲ m a ≲ 10 − 6 eV and axion-like particle dark matter as light as m a ∼ 10 − 14 eV.