| Project Detail |
Magnetically-levitated superconductors have strong potential to revolutionise inertial sensing and magnetic field sensing. In this project I will develop levitated superconductor sensors with unprecedented sensitivities, and use an array of these sensors to search for well-motivated dark matter candidates in unexplored parameter regimes. The sensors will consist of gram-scale superconducting particles stably confined within anti-Helmholtz-like magnetic traps. I will precisely measure the motion of the levitated particles using superconducting quantum circuits. The particle motion will be highly isolated from unwanted effects of the surroundings, since the particles will levitate far from surfaces, in ultrahigh vacuum, at millikelvin temperatures, within nearly dissipationless traps. Passive and active vibration isolation will be used to mitigate vibrational noise, and magnetic shielding will diminish magnetic field noise. Furthermore, the sensor array will be configured to reject common noise. The mechanical sensors will be sensitive to oscillatory forces caused by axion-like particles, dark photons and vector B-L dark matter. Additionally, they will be sensitive to impulses caused by ultraheavy dark matter near the Planck mass. The primary focus of this project is to hunt these diverse dark matter candidates. This project will also establish the groundwork for future searches with this innovative platform. In the long term, levitated superconductor sensors hold the potential to search for dark matter through its gravitational interaction with ordinary matter. Such a search would be able to conclusively probe the existence of dark matter near the Planck mass. |
