Ana Lopes

RADES joins the hunt for dark matter

Submitted by alegall on
25 May 2021

CERN EU Projects in context...

To uncover what the universe is made of and how it works, the core mission of CERN, is supported by the EU projects it participates to. Amongst them lies AxScale, an EU project aimed at finding dark matter particle candidates by studying axions and their relatives. Concretely, the project collaborates with RADES – the project featured in this article – to search for one particular type of axions, as well as the NA62, another facility at CERN, to study a wider range of axions.

Horizon 2020 was key to properly set up this challenging quest for Dark Matter. It helped hiring several team members (technical student, PhD, fellow) to work on experiment design, data analysis, optimisation studies and much more. It allowed for the procurement of equipment as well as the fabrication of prototypes and actual experimental parts. It ensured the dissemination of the project’s results by enabling the young as well as experienced researchers to part-take in conferences and events with the scientific community as well as the general public.

This article was originally published on home.cern

Long-hypothesised particles called axions could solve two problems in one strike: they could explain the puzzling symmetry properties of the strong force and they could make up the mysterious dark matter that permeates the cosmos. One of the newest detectors of the CAST experiment at CERN, RADES, has now joined the worldwide hunt for axions, searching for axions from the Milky Way’s “halo” of dark matter and setting a limit on the strength of their interaction with photons. The results are described in a paper submitted for publication in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

One way of searching for axions from the Milky Way’s dark-matter halo is to look for their conversion into photons in a “resonating cavity”. If such axions surround and enter a resonating cavity that is placed in a strong magnetic field and resonates at a frequency corresponding to their mass, the chances of detecting them through their conversion into photons are increased.

Many experiments have used this search method and set limits on the interaction strength of axions with two photons in the case of small axion masses, mainly below 25 µeV (for comparison, the proton mass is about 1 GeV). Searching for larger axion masses using this approach requires a smaller cavity resonating at a higher frequency, but the smaller volume of a smaller cavity decreases the chances of spotting the particles.

A workaround involves dividing the cavity into smaller cavities that resonate at a higher frequency and collectively don’t result in a loss of cavity volume. This is exactly the concept behind the RADES detector, which was installed inside one of CAST’s dipole magnet bores in 2018 and can search for axions from the Milky Way’s dark-matter halo that have a mass of around 34.67 µeV.

Researchers are developing complementary approaches to searching for axions, and some have searched for larger-mass axions using new cavity designs and placed limits on their interaction strength with two photons. But the best limit so far for an axion mass of 34.67 µeV was placed by CAST’s previous searches for axions from the Sun.

In its latest paper, the CAST team describes the results of the first RADES search for axions. Sifting through data taken for more than 100 hours within a period of 20 days in 2018, the team saw no signs of axions. However, the data places a limit on the interaction strength of axions with two photons in the case of axions with a mass of or close to 34.67 µeV – a limit that is more than 100 times more stringent than CAST’s previous best limit for this mass.

“This result is a significant first step in the direct search for axions using dipole magnets,” says RADES scientist Sergio Arguedas Cuendis. “And as far as axion searches go, it’s one of the most stringent limits ever set for axions with masses above 25 µeV.”


This project has received funding through the European Research Council under Grant Agreement No 802836. AxScale revolves around the search for axions and relatives in the aim of understanding dark matter. Two instruments are used for this purpose: the NA62 experiment, which is sensitive to a vast mass range of axions produced in decays; and the RADES project for the search of QCD axions as a Dark Matter particle. Within CERN, the project is coordinated by the EU Projects Office.

CDS
The RADES detector at the CAST experiment
Researcher Sergio Arguedas Cuendis checking the RADES detector set-up at the CAST experiment. (Image: CERN)
Strap
One of the latest additions to the CAST experiment has set a new limit on the strength of the interaction between photons and hypothetical dark-matter particles called axions