Supraconducting magnet with warm bore for the search of axions and axion-like particles

粒子物理学的标准模型是一个非常精确地描述高能粒子相互作用的理论框架，并已在测量中得到了匹配精度的验证。然而，该模型未能为“暗物质”提供解释，而且它惊人地过度预测了“暗能量”。令人尴尬的是，暗物质和暗能量是宇宙中能量和物质的主要形式。在粒子对撞机或暗物质搜索中弱相互作用大质量粒子（wimp）的罕见散射过程中寻找新的大质量粒子的持续努力到目前为止还没有成功。实验已经达到了足够的灵敏度，可以探测到理论上有利的标准模型扩展。除了暗物质和暗能量的宇宙学证据外，天体物理观测还揭示了宇宙伽马射线在GeV和TeV能量下传播的异常现象，这表明存在一种新的伪标量粒子，其质量为几neV。这种所谓的弱相互作用细粒子（WISP）在之前的任何实验中都没有被注意到。在这里，我们建议购买一个具有温暖孔的超导磁体，这将使我们能够进行三个实验，这些实验有可能发现天体物理观测所指出的低密度黑洞。第一个实验是基于一个新想法，使用嵌入磁场的光纤干涉仪，该干涉仪对光子-微弱光子混合非常敏感，而光子-微弱光子混合正是解释GeV/TeV伽玛射线天文学中发现的异常现象的核心。第二个实验将测试假设，即同样的微弱辐射是暗物质的一个组成部分。最后，第三个实验再次以暗物质搜索为目标，但将质量范围扩大到理论上对特定的WISP（轴子）有利的值。

The standard model of particle physics is a theoretical framework to describe very accurately high energy particle interactions and has been verified with matching accuracy in measurements. The model fails however to provide an explanation for “dark matter” and it spectacularly over-predicts the “dark energy”. Embarassingly, dark matter and dark energy are the dominant forms of energy and matter in the universe. The ongoing efforts to search new and massive particles at particle colliders or in rare scattering processes of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in dark matter searches have so far not been successful. The experiments have reached already sufficient sensitivity to detect theoretically favored extensions of the standard model. Besides the cosmological evidence for dark matter and dark energy, astrophysical observations have revealed anomalies in the propagation of cosmic gamma-rays at GeV and TeV energies that suggest the existence of a new pseudoscalar particle with a mass of a few neV. This type of so-called weakly interacting slim particle (WISP) has gone unnoticed in any previous experiment. Here, we propose to purchase a superconducting magnet with a warm bore that will allow us to carry out three experiments which have the potential to discover the WISPs which are indicated by astrophysical observations. The first experiment is based upon a new idea using a fiber interferometer embedded in the magnetic field and is sensitive to the same photon-WISP mixing that is at the core of the explanation of the anomaly discovered in GeV/TeV gamma-ray astronomy. The second experiment will test the hypotheses that the very same WISPs are a constituent of dark matter. Finally, the third experiment is again aiming at dark matter searches, but extending the mass range to theoretically favored values for a specific WISP, the axion.