Fermilab Theory Seminars

Discovering the QCD Axion with Polarization Haloscopes

by Kevin Zhou (Stanford)

US/Central
Curia II

Curia II

Description

The QCD axion is a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model which dynamically relaxes away strong CP violation. Residual oscillations of the axion can account for dark matter, and lead to a characteristic signature of time-varying CP violating nuclear effects. However, to date most searches for the axion have instead focused on its model-dependent coupling to photons. I will present a new idea for axion detection that directly targets its defining coupling to gluons, by resonantly amplifying the oscillating currents from time-varying electric dipole moments. This is the first proposal sensitive to the axion-gluon coupling at the most motivated GHz frequencies.