Science coffee

Searches for axions and similar particles - from µeV to TeV

by Kristof Schmieden (Mainz)

Europe/Stockholm
Description

Axions, the famous hypothetical particle that explains the absence of CP violation in QCD, was already thought of in the 70ies. Yet only in the past decade the hunt for this and similar particles took up pace, with huge advancements in the recent years.
The reason behind the growing interest is the understanding that axions and axion-like particles can contribute to the dark matter content of the universe. In fact, pseudo-scalar particles are a natural prediction of many extensions of the Standard Model and even possibly explain the muon (g-2) anomaly. Considering the general case of pseudo-scalar particles a huge parameter space in mass and coupling to SM particles opens up, requiring a variety of experimental approaches to hunt for these particles.
This talk will briefly introduce the phenomenology of axions and axion-like particles. Then give an overview of experimental approaches to search for these particles, eventually focusing on superconducting RF cavity based searches.