Abstract:
The nature of dark matter remains one of physics' greatest mysteries, with compelling evidence for its existence from gravitational effects and its estimated contribution to the universe's energy density, despite the lack of direct detection. Low-mass bosonic candidates, such as axions and dark/hidden photons, are promising candidates, predicted to exist as coherent waves. Microwave cavity haloscope experiments are designed to detect these candidates by resonantly enhancing the oscillating electric field generated by the dark matter field. However, standard detection methods using nearly quantum-limited amplifiers face limitations, necessitating sub-Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) techniques for increased sensitivity.
This colloquium will discuss recent advancements utilizing superconducting qubits as microwave photon counters based on repeated quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements of cavity photons using a superconducting transmon qubit. Using qubits to count photons can reduce the background noise substantially. In the second half I will show how qubits can be used to prepare quantum states of lights to enhance the dark matter transduction rate increasing the signal using stimulated emission.
Speaker: David Schuster, Stanford University
Host: TBA
Keywords: CFP, Physics