Speaker
Mr
M. Rawlik
(ETH Zürich, Institute for Particle Physics, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland, On behalf of the nEDM collaboration at PSI)
Description
Axion-like particles (ALPs) are good candidates for cold dark matter. They would form a galactic-scale classical field, which on local scales undergoes coherent oscillations. Through their coupling to gluons these particles would induce oscillating electric dipole moments (EDMs) in nucleons and atoms [1,2]. We analyse data of two neutron EDM experiments: ILL, Grenoble, France (1998-2002) and PSI, Villigen, Switzerland (2015-16), explicitly looking for an oscillating neutron EDM signal [3,4]. Our analysis is the first direct laboratory search for the ALP-gluon coupling, with improved sensitivity over indirect bounds from BBN and supernovae observations. Our search also covers the cosmologically interesting range of dark matter particle masses 1e-24 eV < m < 1e-20 eV, which can resolve several long-standing “small-scale crises” of the cold DM model [5].
[1] P. W. Graham, S. Rajendran, Phys. Rev. D 84, 055013 (2011).
[2] Y. V. Stadnik, V. V. Flambaum, Phys. Rev. D 89, 043522 (2014).
[3] N. Ayres, PhD thesis, University of Sussex, in preparation.
[4] M. Rawlik, PhD thesis, ETH Zürich, in preparation.
[5] D. J. E. Marsh, Phys. Rept. 643, 1 (2016).
Primary author
Mr
M. Rawlik
(ETH Zürich, Institute for Particle Physics, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland, On behalf of the nEDM collaboration at PSI)
Co-authors
Dr
D. J. E. Marsh
(King's College London Department of Physics, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom)
Prof.
M. Fairbairn
(King's College London Department of Physics, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom)
Prof.
V. V. Flambaum
(School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia)
Dr
Y. V. Stadnik
(Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Helmholtz-Institut Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany)
