Supraconducting magnet with warm bore for the search of axions and axion-like particles

• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: Funded in 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415898535

The standard model of particle physics is a theoretical framework to describe very accurately high energy particle interactions and has been verified with matching accuracy in measurements. The model fails however to provide an explanation for “dark matter” and it spectacularly over-predicts the “dark energy”. Embarassingly, dark matter and dark energy are the dominant forms of energy and matter in the universe. The ongoing efforts to search new and massive particles at particle colliders or in rare scattering processes of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in dark matter searches have so far not been successful. The experiments have reached already sufficient sensitivity to detect theoretically favored extensions of the standard model. Besides the cosmological evidence for dark matter and dark energy, astrophysical observations have revealed anomalies in the propagation of cosmic gamma-rays at GeV and TeV energies that suggest the existence of a new pseudoscalar particle with a mass of a few neV. This type of so-called weakly interacting slim particle (WISP) has gone unnoticed in any previous experiment. Here, we propose to purchase a superconducting magnet with a warm bore that will allow us to carry out three experiments which have the potential to discover the WISPs which are indicated by astrophysical observations. The first experiment is based upon a new idea using a fiber interferometer embedded in the magnetic field and is sensitive to the same photon-WISP mixing that is at the core of the explanation of the anomaly discovered in GeV/TeV gamma-ray astronomy. The second experiment will test the hypotheses that the very same WISPs are a constituent of dark matter. Finally, the third experiment is again aiming at dark matter searches, but extending the mass range to theoretically favored values for a specific WISP, the axion.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Supraleitender Magnet mit warmer Bohrung für die Suche nach Axionen und axionartiger Teilchen
• Instrumentation Group: 0120 Supraleitende Labormagnete
• Applicant Institution: Universität Hamburg
• Leader: Professor Dr. Dieter Horns