Axion Wind Detection with the Homogeneous Precession Domain of Superfluid Helium-3
Abstract
Axions and axion-like particles may couple to nuclear spins like a weak oscillating effective magnetic field. Existing proposals for detecting this "axion wind" sourced by dark matter exploit analogies to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and aim to detect the small transverse field generated when the axion wind resonantly tips the precessing spins in a polarized sample of material. In this talk, the speaker will describe a new proposal using the homogeneous precession domain of superfluid He-3 as the detection medium, where the effect of the axion wind is a small shift in the precession frequency of a large-amplitude NMR signal. This setup can provide broadband detection of multiple axion masses simultaneously, and has competitive sensitivity to other axion wind experiments such as CASPEr-Wind at masses below 0.1 micro-eV by exploiting precision frequency metrology in the readout stage.
About the speaker
Dr. Christina GAO completed her PhD from the University of California Davis in 2018, followed by a postdoctoral position at Fermilab till 2021. Now she is a postdoc at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is interested in designing tabletop experiments to direct detect wave-like dark matter.
About the program
For more information, please refer to the program website at http://iasprogram.ust.hk/particle_theory.
