This document constitutes an excerpt of the Technical Design Report for the second stage of the "Any Light Particle Search" (ALPS-II) at DESY as submitted to the DESY PRC in August 2012 and reviewed ...in November 2012. ALPS-II is a "Light Shining through a Wall" experiment which searches for photon oscillations into weakly interacting sub-eV particles. These are often predicted by extensions of the Standard Model and motivated by astrophysical phenomena. The first phases of the ALPS-II project were approved by the DESY management on 21 February, 2013.
A
bstract
RADES (Relic Axion Detector Exploratory Setup) is a project with the goal of directly searching for axion dark matter above the 30
μ
eV scale employing custom-made microwave filters in ...magnetic dipole fields. Currently RADES is taking data at the LHC dipole of the CAST experiment. In the long term, the RADES cavities are envisioned to take data in the BabyIAXO magnet. In this article we report on the modelling, building and characterisation of an optimised microwave-filter design with alternating irises that exploits maximal coupling to axions while being scalable in length without suffering from mode-mixing. We develop the mathematical formalism and theoretical study which justifies the performance of the chosen design. We also point towards the applicability of this formalism to optimise the MADMAX dielectric haloscopes.
The high efficiency, low background, and single-photon detection with transition-edge sensors (TES) is making this type of detector attractive in widely different types of applications. In this ...paper, we present first characterizations of a TES to be used in the Any Light Particle Search (ALPS) experiment searching for new fundamental ultra-light particles. Firstly, we describe the setup and the main components of the ALPS TES detector (TES, millikelvin-cryostat and SQUID readout) and their performances. Secondly, we explain a dedicated analysis method for single-photon spectroscopy and rejection of non-photon background. Finally, we report on results from extensive background measurements. Considering an event selection, optimized for a wavelength of 1064 nm, we achieved a background suppression of
with a
% efficiency for photons passing the selection. The resulting overall efficiency was 23% with a dark count rate of
. We observed that pile-up events of thermal photons are the main background components.
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BFBNIB, GIS, IJS, KISLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
The International Axion Observatory (IAXO) will be a forth generation axion helioscope. As its primary physics goal, IAXO will look for axions or axion-like particles (ALPs) originating in the Sun ...via the Primakoff conversion of the solar plasma photons. In terms of signal-to-noise ratio, IAXO will be about 4-5 orders of magnitude more sensitive than CAST, currently the most powerful axion helioscope, reaching sensitivity to axion-photon couplings down to a few x10 super(-12) GeV super(-1) and thus probing a large fraction of the currently unexplored axion and ALP parameter space. IAXO will also be sensitive to solar axions produced by mechanisms mediated by the axion-electron coupling g sub(ae) with sensitivity - for the first time - to values of g sub(ae) not previously excluded by astrophysics. With several other possible physics cases, IAXO has the potential to serve as a multi-purpose facility for generic axion and ALP research in the next decade. In this paper we present the conceptual design of IAXO, which follows the layout of an enhanced axion helioscope, based on a purpose-built 20 m-long 8-coils toroidal superconducting magnet. All the eight 60cm-diameter magnet bores are equipped with focusing x-ray optics, able to focus the signal photons into ~ 0.2 cm super(2) spots that are imaged by ultra-low-background Micromegas x-ray detectors. The magnet is built into a structure with elevation and azimuth drives that will allow for solar tracking for ~12 h each day.
Standard Model extensions often predict low‐mass and very weakly interacting particles, such as the axion. A number of small‐scale experiments at the intensity/precision frontier are actively ...searching for these elusive particles, complementing searches for physics beyond the Standard Model at colliders. Whilst a next generation of experiments will give access to a huge unexplored parameter space, a discovery would have a tremendous impact on our understanding of fundamental physics.
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We report on a new search for solar chameleons with the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST). A GridPix detector was used to search for soft X-ray photons in the energy range from 200 eV to 10 keV from ...converted solar chameleons. No significant excess over the expected background has been observed in the data taken in 2014 and 2015. We set an improved limit on the chameleon photon coupling, βγ≲#5.7×1010 for 1<βm<106 at 95% C.L. improving our previous results by a factor two and for the first time reaching sensitivity below the solar luminosity bound for tachocline magnetic fields up to 12.5 T.
We report on a first measurement with a sensitive opto-mechanical force sensor designed for the direct detection of coupling of real chameleons to matter. These dark energy candidates could be ...produced in the Sun and stream unimpeded to Earth. The KWISP detector installed on the CAST axion search experiment at CERN looks for tiny displacements of a thin membrane caused by the mechanical effect of solar chameleons. The displacements are detected by a Michelson interferometer with a homodyne readout scheme. The sensor benefits from the focusing action of the ABRIXAS X-ray telescope installed at CAST, which increases the chameleon flux on the membrane. A mechanical chopper placed between the telescope output and the detector modulates the incoming chameleon stream. We present the results of the solar chameleon measurements taken at CAST in July 2017, setting an upper bound on the force acting on the membrane of 80pN at 95% confidence level. The detector is sensitive for direct coupling to matter 104≤βm≤108, where the coupling to photons is locally bound to βγ≤1011.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A search for heavy neutral lepton (N) production in K+→e+N decays using the data sample collected by the NA62 experiment at CERN in 2017–2018 is reported. Upper limits of the extended neutrino mixing ...matrix element |Ue4|2 are established at the level of 10−9 over most of the accessible heavy neutral lepton mass range 144–462 MeV/c2, with the assumption that the lifetime exceeds 50 ns. These limits improve significantly upon those of previous production and decay searches. The |Ue4|2 range favoured by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is excluded up to a mass of about 340 MeV/c2.
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The NA62 experiment at CERN reports searches for K+→μ+N and K+→μ+νX decays, where N and X are massive invisible particles, using the 2016–2018 data set. The N particle is assumed to be a heavy ...neutral lepton, and the results are expressed as upper limits of O(10−8) of the neutrino mixing parameter |Uμ4|2 for N masses in the range 200–384 MeV/c2 and lifetime exceeding 50 ns. The X particle is considered a scalar or vector hidden sector mediator decaying to an invisible final state, and upper limits of the decay branching fraction for X masses in the range 10–370 MeV/c2 are reported for the first time, ranging from O(10−5) to O(10−7). An improved upper limit of 1.0×10−6 is established at 90% CL on the K+→μ+ννν¯ branching fraction.
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