VIRTUAL
 
Thursday, October 29th , 2020
3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
WEBEX
 
Join meeting
 
  
Speaker: Prof. Steve Lamoreaux
Professor of Physics / Director of Graduate Admissions
Yale University 
 
“Looking for a Needle in the HAYSTAC: Limits on Axion Dark Matter in the 20 micro-eV Mass Range”
 
 
 
Abstract: 
 
The Haloscope at Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold Dark Matter (HAYSTAC) has been operating for several years. Recently, the detector was improved by the incorporation of a squeezed quantum state photon detector, and is among the very first systems, along with LIGO, to use "quantum technologies"  to increase experimental sensitivity.   A background of the dark matter will be presented, and a case will be made that the axion is a leading candidate particle, as it has been since the early 1980's but was mostly ignored. The lack of a supersymmetry signal at the LHC and the exquisitely sensitive null results from massive particle dark matter searches, together with new experimental techniques that are available, have brought the axion into vogue.