Development of New Directions in Axion Dark Matter Searches
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States). Applied Modern Physics Group
The bright objects we observe in the night sky make up less than 20% of the matter in the Universe. More than 80% of matter is invisible dark matter [1], which was postulated because the amount of visible matter in galaxy clusters could not account for the galaxies’ velocities [2]. Observations from cosmology and astrophysics that converge on the existence of dark matter include the cosmic microwave background power spectrum [3], cluster and galactic rotation curves [2], gravitational lensing [4,5] and large-scale structure formation [6]. The existence of dark matter is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in physics, providing concrete evident for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Many particle candidates have been introduced, including weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and ultralight bosons, such as the axion [7]. No candidates have been discovered, despite many searches, and the nature of dark matter is still unknown. The axion is a new fundamental spin-0 particle, which was originally motivated by explaining the strong charge-parity (CP) problem of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) [7], the theory of the strong nuclear force within nucleons. The CP-violating term in QCD within the SM is expected to generate a sizable neutron electric dipole moment (EDM), while the experimental upper bound is roughly one trillionth that size [8]. The strong CP problem is the non-observation of this neutron EDM. Discovery of axions would aid in understanding both the cosmological dark matter problem and the strong CP problem.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
- DOE Contract Number:
- 89233218CNA000001
- OSTI ID:
- 1501785
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-19-22470
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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