Experiment Overview
The nature of dark matter is one of the longest enduring cosmological mysteries. The axion is one of the few candidates for dark matter that would not only explain most of the matter in the universe, but another outstanding problem in physics: why is the strong force time-symmetric? The ALPHA (Axion Longitudinal Plasma HAloscope) Consortium is working to detect the axion and help explain the underlying structure of the universe. By using a wire metamaterial to create an artificial plasma with designer properties, ALPHA will create a kind of “radio” capable of picking up axion dark matter.
Finding the axion is a bit like tuning a radio: you have to tune your antenna until you pick up the right frequency. However, rather than hearing music, experimentalists in ALPHA would be rewarded with ‘hearing’ the dark matter that the Earth is traveling through. This signal is extremely weak, so it requires a powerful antenna and a very low noise environment to be detected.
Yale Research Activities
ALPHA is located at Yale’s Wright Lab. Yale is responsible for systems engineering, cryogenics, and magnetics. Yale faculty involvement in ALPHA includes Heeger, Keith Baker, Sean Barrett, Charles Brown, Steve Lamoreaux, Konrad Lehnert, and Reina Maruyama. Maruyama is deputy spokesperson of ALPHA.
For more detailed information, please see the Axion Dark Matter at Yale Website.
