CPC Seminar: Seeing the invisible: the search for low-mass axion dark matter

  • May 8, 2023, 2:00 pm US/Central
  • Curia II
  • Chiara Salemi, Stanford
  • Host: Dylan Temples, dtemples@fnal.gov

Abstract: Multiple astrophysical and cosmological observations have shown that the visible matter described by the Standard Model is only a small fraction of the energy in the universe. We believe that there is about five times as much dark matter, which is likely comprised of massive particles that interact very little or not at all with other matter. One of the most well-motivated candidates to be the dark matter is the axion, a particle that is predicted by the solution to another long-standing mystery in physics, the strong CP problem. This talk discusses direct searches for low-mass axion dark matter. The prototype experiment, ABRACADABRA-10 cm, developed the innovative lumped-element detection method and set world-leading limits on axions. It also set the stage for the upcoming DMRadio program, a series of larger detectors that will be capable of finding axions or definitively excluding them over a large range of masses below 1 μeV.