WISPLC: Search for Dark Matter with LC Circuit

Abstract

The focus on dark matter search has expanded to include low-mass particles such as axions or axion-like particles, and novel theoretical schemes extending the phenomenological landscape, within QCD and beyond, also garnered additional interest in recent decades. Assuming dark matter is composed of axions, in presence of a solenoidal magnetic field, they induce a displacement current that gives rise to a toroidal magnetic field. The Weakly Interacting Slender Particle detection with LC circuit (WISPLC) is a precision direct detection experiment that will search for light dark matter candidates such as axion-like particles in parts of the parameter space previously unexplored. We present two detection schemes of the signal in a pickup loop capturing the flux of this toroidal magnetic field. WISPLC operates in a broadband and a resonant scheme where a LC circuit is used to enhance the signal with an expected Q factor ∼ 10 4 . Taking into account the irreducible flux noise of the detector, we estimate the sensitivity of the experiment in the axion mass range between 10 −11 eV and 10 −6 eV to reach a detectable axion-photon coupling of gaγγ ≈ 10 −15 GeV −1 , making it possible to probe mass ranges corresponding to ultralight axions motivated by string theory. The WISPLC experiment is fully funded and currently in the construction phase.

Potential of Radio Telescopes as High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Detectors

“…ADMX SLIC [11], BASE [12], DMRadio [13][14][15], SHAFT [16] and WISPLC [17] us a resonant LC circuit to search for tiny oscillating induced magnetic fields generated by a dark matter axion background in the presence of a strong external static magnetic field B 0 . From Eqs.…”

Axion dark matter (theory & experiment)

“…The induced field can be turned into an alternating current in a pickup loop, resonantly amplified in a tunable LC circuit, and finally detected via a SQUID. There have been already pilot experiments along these lines (ABRACADABRA [44,45], ADMX SLIC [46], SHAFT [47]), and the next generation is currently starting (WISPLC [48], DMRadio [49]). The ultimate goal of the DMRadio collaboration is to probe axion dark matter in the range from neV to micro-eV down to DFSZ sensitivity, see Fig.…”

Probing Poincaré Violation

“…in dark green, whereas the projected sensitivities from Refs. [91,[100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114] in light green in Fig. 4.…”