Showing 1–12 of 12 results
Eric Adelberger, William Terrano
We comment on arXiv:1901.10843, pointing out that its constraint on ultra-low-mass axions is incompatible with the duration of the data set described. We describe a simple way to analyze such data that gives the correct scaling.
William A. Terrano, Eric G. Adelberger, Charles A. Hagedorn, Blayne R. Heckel
We analyzed an 6.7-year span of data from a rotating torsion-pendulum containing $\approx 10^{23}$ polarized electrons to search for the "wind" arising from ultralight, axionlike dark matter with masses between $10^{-23}$ and $10^{-18}$ eV/c$^2$. Over most of this range we obtain a 95\% confidence limit $F_{\rm a}/C_{\rm e} \geq 1 \times 10^{15}$ eV on the axionlike decay constant.
William A. Terrano, Ingyin Zaw, Glennys R. Farrar
We report on Chandra X-ray observations of possible-AGNs which have been correlated with Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) observed by the Pierre Auger Collaboration. Combining our X-ray observations with optical observations, we conclude that one-third of the 21 Veron-Cetty Veron (VCV) galaxies correlating with UHECRs in the first Auger data-release are actually not AGNs. We review existing optical observations of the 20 VCV galaxies correlating with UHECRs in the second Auger data-release and determine that three of them are not AGNs and two are uncertain. Overall, of the 57 published UHECRs with |b|>10 degrees, 22 or 23 correlate with true AGNs using the Auger correlation parameters. We also measured the X-ray luminosity of ESO139-G12 to complete the determination of the bolometric luminosities of AGNs correlating with UHECRs in the first data-set. Apart from two candidate sources which require further observation, we determined bolometric luminosities for the candidate galaxies of the second dataset. We find that only two of the total of 69 published UHECRs correlate with AGNs (IC5135 and IC4329a) which are powerful enough in their steady-state to accelerate protons to the observed energies of their correlated UHECRs. The GZK expectation is that about 45% of the sources of UHECRs above 60 EeV should be contained within the z<0.018 volume defined by the Auger scan analysis, so an observed level of 30-50% correlation with weak AGNs is compatible with the suggestion that AGNs experience transient high-luminosity states during which they accelerate UHECRs.
William A. Terrano, Jonas Meinel, Natasha Sachdeva, Timothy E. Chupp, Skyler Degenkolb, Peter Fierlinger, Florian Kuchler, Jaideep T. Singh
Polarized nuclei are a powerful tool in nuclear spin studies and in searches for beyond-the-standard model physics. Noble-gas comagnetometer systems, which compare two nuclear species, have thus far been limited by anomalous frequency variations of unknown origin. We studied the self-interactions in a $^3$He-$^{129}$Xe system by independently addressing, controlling and measuring the influence of each component of the nuclear spin polarization. Our results directly rule out prior explanations of the shifts, and demonstrate experimentally that they can be explained by species dependent self-interactions. We also report the first gas phase frequency shift induced by $^{129}$Xe on $^3$He.
William A. Terrano, Ingyin Zaw, Glennys R. Farrar
The Auger observatory has observed a possible correlation between Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) above 57 EeV and nearby candidate Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) from the Veron-Cetty Veron catalog (VCV). In this paper we report on Chandra X-ray observations of 10 unconfirmed VCV AGN-candidates and luminous IR galaxies correlating with the first set of Auger UHECRs, to determine whether or not they have active nuclei. The X-ray data, when combined with optical luminosities, show that in fact none of the 10 galaxies have a significant AGN component; if there is any nuclear activity at all, it is weak rather than obscured. This reduces the number of UHECRs in the original Auger dataset possibly correlating with AGNs from 20 of 27 down to 14 of 27. We also used Chandra to measure the X-ray luminosity of ESO 139-G12, an AGN which correlates with 2 of the Auger UHECRs, to obtain the first estimate of its bolometric luminosity; this completes the determination of the bolometric luminosities of all correlating AGNs. Taking our results into account, only one of the 27 UHECRs in the original Auger data-release is correlated on a few-degree angular scale with an identified AGN that is powerful enough in its steady-state to accelerate protons to the observed energies, according to conventional acceleration mechanisms. Intriguingly, approximately 60% of the UHECRs with $|b|>10^\circ$ do correlate with genuine AGNs, but these are too weak to meet the acceleration criterion for protons; this may be an indication that AGNs experience transient high-luminosity states which can accelerate UHECRs. To determine the source(s) and composition of UHECRs through statistical correlation studies requires reliable, complete and uniform catalogs of identified AGNs; our a posteriori inspection of ambiguous source candidates underscores the inadequacies of the VCV catalog in this respect.
Mariangela Lisanti, Matthew Moschella, William Terrano
Ultralight axion-like particles are well-motivated dark matter candidates that are the target of numerous direct detection efforts. In the vicinity of the Solar System, such particles can be treated as oscillating scalar fields. The velocity dispersion of the Milky Way determines a coherence time of about 10^6 oscillations, beyond which the amplitude of the axion field fluctuates stochastically. Any analysis of data from an axion direct detection experiment must carefully account for this stochastic behavior to properly interpret the results. This is especially true for experiments sensitive to the gradient of the axion field that are unable to collect data for many coherence times. Indeed, the direction, in addition to the amplitude, of the axion field gradient fluctuates stochastically. We present the first complete stochastic treatment for the gradient of the axion field, including multiple computationally efficient methods for performing likelihood-based data analysis, which can be applied to any axion signal, regardless of coherence time. Additionally, we demonstrate that ignoring the stochastic behavior of the gradient of the axion field can potentially result in failure to discover a true axion signal.
Marco Battaglieri, Alberto Belloni, Aaron Chou, Priscilla Cushman, Bertrand Echenard, Rouven Essig, Juan Estrada, Jonathan L. Feng, Brenna Flaugher, Patrick J. Fox, Peter Graham, Carter Hall, Roni Harnik, JoAnne Hewett, Joseph Incandela, Eder Izaguirre, Daniel McKinsey, Matthew Pyle, Natalie Roe, Gray Rybka, Pierre Sikivie, Tim M. P. Tait, Natalia Toro, Richard Van De Water, Neal Weiner, Kathryn Zurek, Eric Adelberger, Andrei Afanasev, Derbin Alexander, James Alexander, Vasile Cristian Antochi, David Mark Asner, Howard Baer, Dipanwita Banerjee, Elisabetta Baracchini, Phillip Barbeau, Joshua Barrow, Noemie Bastidon, James Battat, Stephen Benson, Asher Berlin, Mark Bird, Nikita Blinov, Kimberly K. Boddy, Mariangela Bondi, Walter M. Bonivento, Mark Boulay, James Boyce, Maxime Brodeur, Leah Broussard, Ranny Budnik, Philip Bunting, Marc Caffee, Sabato Stefano Caiazza, Sheldon Campbell, Tongtong Cao, Gianpaolo Carosi, Massimo Carpinelli, Gianluca Cavoto, Andrea Celentano, Jae Hyeok Chang, Swapan Chattopadhyay, Alvaro Chavarria, Chien-Yi Chen, Kenneth Clark, John Clarke, Owen Colegrove, Jonathon Coleman, David Cooke, Robert Cooper, Michael Crisler, Paolo Crivelli, Francesco D'Eramo, Domenico D'Urso, Eric Dahl, William Dawson, Marzio De Napoli, Raffaella De Vita, Patrick DeNiverville, Stephen Derenzo, Antonia Di Crescenzo, Emanuele Di Marco, Keith R. Dienes, Milind Diwan, Dongwi Handiipondola Dongwi, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Sebastian Ellis, Anthony Chigbo Ezeribe, Glennys Farrar, Francesc Ferrer, Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano, Alessandra Filippi, Giuliana Fiorillo, Bartosz Fornal, Arne Freyberger, Claudia Frugiuele, Cristian Galbiati, Iftah Galon, Susan Gardner, Andrew Geraci, Gilles Gerbier, Mathew Graham, Edda Gschwendtner, Christopher Hearty, Jaret Heise, Reyco Henning, Richard J. Hill, David Hitlin, Yonit Hochberg, Jason Hogan, Maurik Holtrop, Ziqing Hong, Todd Hossbach, T. B. Humensky, Philip Ilten, Kent Irwin, John Jaros, Robert Johnson, Matthew Jones, Yonatan Kahn, Narbe Kalantarians, Manoj Kaplinghat, Rakshya Khatiwada, Simon Knapen, Michael Kohl, Chris Kouvaris, Jonathan Kozaczuk, Gordan Krnjaic, Valery Kubarovsky, Eric Kuflik, Alexander Kusenko, Rafael Lang, Kyle Leach, Tongyan Lin, Mariangela Lisanti, Jing Liu, Kun Liu, Ming Liu, Dinesh Loomba, Joseph Lykken, Katherine Mack, Jeremiah Mans, Humphrey Maris, Thomas Markiewicz, Luca Marsicano, C. J. Martoff, Giovanni Mazzitelli, Christopher McCabe, Samuel D. McDermott, Art McDonald, Bryan McKinnon, Dongming Mei, Tom Melia, Gerald A. Miller, Kentaro Miuchi, Sahara Mohammed Prem Nazeer, Omar Moreno, Vasiliy Morozov, Frederic Mouton, Holger Mueller, Alexander Murphy, Russell Neilson, Tim Nelson, Christopher Neu, Yuri Nosochkov, Ciaran O'Hare, Noah Oblath, John Orrell, Jonathan Ouellet, Saori Pastore, Sebouh Paul, Maxim Perelstein, Annika Peter, Nguyen Phan, Nan Phinney, Michael Pivovaroff, Andrea Pocar, Maxim Pospelov, Josef Pradler, Paolo Privitera, Stefano Profumo, Mauro Raggi, Surjeet Rajendran, Nunzio Randazzo, Tor Raubenheimer, Christian Regenfus, Andrew Renshaw, Adam Ritz, Thomas Rizzo, Leslie Rosenberg, Andre Rubbia, Ben Rybolt, Tarek Saab, Benjamin R. Safdi, Elena Santopinto, Andrew Scarff, Michael Schneider, Philip Schuster, George Seidel, Hiroyuki Sekiya, Ilsoo Seong, Gabriele Simi, Valeria Sipala, Tracy Slatyer, Oren Slone, Peter F Smith, Jordan Smolinsky, Daniel Snowden-Ifft, Matthew Solt, Andrew Sonnenschein, Peter Sorensen, Neil Spooner, Brijesh Srivastava, Ion Stancu, Louis Strigari, Jan Strube, Alexander O. Sushkov, Matthew Szydagis, Philip Tanedo, David Tanner, Rex Tayloe, William Terrano, Jesse Thaler, Brooks Thomas, Brianna Thorpe, Thomas Thorpe, Javier Tiffenberg, Nhan Tran, Marco Trovato, Christopher Tully, Tony Tyson, Tanmay Vachaspati, Sven Vahsen, Karl van Bibber, Justin Vandenbroucke, Anthony Villano, Tomer Volansky, Guojian Wang, Thomas Ward, William Wester, Andrew Whitbeck, David A. Williams, Matthew Wing, Lindley Winslow, Bogdan Wojtsekhowski, Hai-Bo Yu, Shin-Shan Yu, Tien-Tien Yu, Xilin Zhang, Yue Zhao, Yi-Ming Zhong
W. A. Terrano, M. V. Romalis
We discuss the use of comagnetometry in studying new physics that couples to fermionic spin. Modern comagnetometry is -- in absolute energy units -- the most sensitive experimental technique for measuring the energy difference between quantum states, reaching sensitivities in the $10^{-26}\,$eV range. The technique suppresses the magnetic interactions of the spins, making searches for non-standard-model interactions possible. Many implementations have been developed and optimized for various uses. New physics scenarios which can be probed with comagnetometers include: EDMs, violations of Lorentz invariance, Goldstone bosons of new high-energy symmetries, CP-violating long-range forces, and axionic dark matter. We consider the prospects for improvements in the technique, and show -- based purely on signal-to-noise ratio with existing technology -- that there is room for several orders of magnitude in further improvement. We also evaluate several sources of systematic error and instability that may limit improvements.
K. L. Wood, W. A. Terrano
We present a new class of control pulses designed to transfer co-located ensembles without relying on frequency selectivity, thereby allowing much faster state-transitions. A geometric approach allows us to construct sequences which are robust to changes in the background magnetic field along multiple axes, and errors in the pulse area. \red{These pulses are extremely fast, with robustness to pulse area shown at half the quantum speed limit.} We demonstrate these sequences on nuclear-dipole states, showing milliradian precision over several hours, 30-fold beyond the previous state of the art. This provides a path for extending the coherent integration time of ultra-long-lived nuclear-spin states to the fundamental limit set by their $>$10000 second lifetimes, as the limiting self-interactions of the nuclei are suppressed in the symmetric superposition. The state-preparation quality demonstrated here directly opens up 30-fold improvements in next generation tests of the standard model, especially tests of the symmetries of QCD and searches for dark matter; it is also crucial for the development of nuclear-spin based quantum memories and may be useful in other scenarios demanding extremely fast but robust transitions.
Junyi Lee, Mariangela Lisanti, William A. Terrano, Michael Romalis
Ultralight axion-like particles can contribute to the dark matter near the Sun, leading to a distinct, stochastic signature in terrestrial experiments. We search for such particles through their neutron-spin coupling by re-analyzing approximately 40 days of data from a K-$^3$He co-magnetometer with a new frequency-domain likelihood-based formalism that properly accounts for stochastic effects over all axion coherence times relative to the experimental time span. Assuming that axions make up all of the dark matter in the Sun's vicinity, we find a median 95% upper limit on the neutron-spin coupling of $2.4 \times 10^{-10}$ GeV$^{-1}$ for axion masses from 0.4 to 4 feV, which is about five orders of magnitude more stringent than previous laboratory bounds in that mass range. Although several peaks in the experiment's magnetic power spectrum suggest the rejection of a white-noise null hypothesis, further analysis of their lineshapes yields no positive evidence for a dark matter axion.
Peter W. Graham, David E. Kaplan, Jeremy Mardon, Surjeet Rajendran, William A. Terrano, Lutz Trahms, Thomas Wilkason
Axion-like particles are promising candidates to make up the dark matter of the universe, but it is challenging to design experiments that can detect them over their entire allowed mass range. Dark matter in general, and in particular axion-like particles and hidden photons, can be as light as roughly $10^{-22} \;\rm{eV}$ ($\sim 10^{-8} \;\rm{Hz}$), with astrophysical anomalies providing motivation for the lightest masses ("fuzzy dark matter"). We propose experimental techniques for direct detection of axion-like dark matter in the mass range from roughly $10^{-13} \;\rm{eV}$ ($\sim 10^2 \;\rm{Hz}$) down to the lowest possible masses. In this range, these axion-like particles act as a time-oscillating magnetic field coupling only to spin, inducing effects such as a time-oscillating torque and periodic variations in the spin-precession frequency with the frequency and direction set by fundamental physics. We show how these signals can be measured using existing experimental technology, including torsion pendulums, atomic magnetometers, and atom interferometry. These experiments demonstrate a strong discovery capability, with future iterations of these experiments capable of pushing several orders of magnitude past current astrophysical bounds.
Peter W. Graham, David E. Kaplan, Jeremy Mardon, Surjeet Rajendran, William A. Terrano
The mass of the dark matter particle is unknown, and may be as low as ~$10^{-22}$ eV. The lighter part of this range, below ~eV, is relatively unexplored both theoretically and experimentally but contains an array of natural dark matter candidates. An example is the relaxion, a light boson predicted by cosmological solutions to the hierarchy problem. One of the few generic signals such light dark matter can produce is a time-oscillating, EP-violating force. We propose searches for this using accelerometers, and consider in detail the examples of torsion balances, atom interferometry, and pulsar timing. These approaches have the potential to probe large parts of unexplored parameter space in the next several years. Thus such accelerometers provide radically new avenues for the direct detection of dark matter.
This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.