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Ellis, Sebastian R.

Publications and source records attributed to Ellis, Sebastian R..

Signals of millicharged dark matter in light-shining-through-wall experiments

We discuss a novel detection technique for millicharged dark matter that makes use of existing light-shining-through-wall (LSW) experiments searching for massive dark photons. Since millicharged particles interact with both the visible and dark sectors, a small background of such particles enables the search for visible signals even in the limit of a massless dark photon. Furthermore, for sufficiently large couplings, a small dark matter subcomponent consisting of millicharged particles can have a terrestrial abundance that is significantly enhanced with respect to its galactic abundance. We leverage this fact to show that in certain parts of parameter space, future runs of the LSW Dark SRF experiment can be used to set the strongest limits on millicharged relics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Axion dark matter detection by superconducting resonant frequency conversion

We propose an approach to search for axion dark matter with a specially designed superconducting radio frequency cavity, targeting axions with masses ma ≲ 10 -6 eV. Our approach exploits axion-induced transitions between nearly degenerate resonant modes of frequency ~ GHz. A scan over axion mass is achieved by varying the frequency splitting between the two modes. Compared to traditional approaches, this allows for parametrically enhanced signal power for axions lighter than a GHz. The projected sensitivity covers unexplored parameter space for QCD axion dark matter for 10 -8 eV ≲ ma ≲ 10 -6 eV and axion-like particle dark matter as light as ma~ 10 -14 eV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗