25–27 Aug 2015
Livermore Valley Open Campus
US/Pacific timezone

Piezoelectric Tuning of Microwave Cavities for Axion Searches

25 Aug 2015, 16:10
20m
Yosemite Room (Livermore Valley Open Campus)

Yosemite Room

Livermore Valley Open Campus

Speaker

Mr Christian Boutan (University of Washington)

Description

The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) searches for dark-matter axions by looking for their resonant conversion to microwave photons in a strong magnetic field. In the event that ADMX rules out axions in the 500MHz - 2GHz frequency range, new technologies and cavity geometries will need to be explored to find higher mass axions. ADMX Sidecar is a higher frequency pathfinder experiment that uses a miniature resonant cavity to search for axions in the 3.5GHz-6GHz frequency range. The Sidecar cavity sits on top of the main ADMX cavity and relies greatly upon piezo motors for tuning and for antenna coupling. Here I discuss the progress of this experiment and give an update on our success with piezoelectric tuning/coupling.

Primary author

Mr Christian Boutan (University of Washington)

Presentation materials