PNNL

Abstract

Dark Matter makes up 85% of the matter in the universe and 27% of its energy is density, but we don't know what compromises dark matter. It is possible that dark matter may be composed of either axions or dark photons, both of which can be detected using an ultra-sensitive microwave cavity known as a haloscope. The haloscope employed by ADMX consists of a cylindrical cavity operating at the TM010 mode and is sensitive to the QCD axion with masses of few µeV. However, this haloscope design becomes challenging to implement for higher masses. This is because higher masses require smaller-diameter cavities, consequently reducing the detection volume which diminishes the detected signal power. ADMX-Orpheus mitigates this issue by operating a tunable, dielectrically-loaded cavity at a higher-order mode, allowing the detection volume to remain large. This paper describes the design, operation, analysis, and results of the inaugural ADMX-Orpheus dark photon search between 65.5 µeV (15.8 GHz) and 69.3 µeV (16.8 GHz), as well as future directions for axion searches and for exploring more parameter space.