Scientists used a levitating magnet to hunt for dark matter
The quantum-based magnet technique could allow scientists to spot ultralight dark matter particles.
The quantum-based approach may justify the presence of hypothetical ultralight particles
A magnet levitates over a superconductor. Scientists used this phenomenon in a tag ultralight murky topic.
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In a serious-of-its-form take a look at, scientists used a levitated magnet to tag murky topic, the unidentified substance believed to be point to throughout the cosmos. If murky topic is made up of ultralight particles, it'll behave cherish a wave that will subtly jostle the magnet.
Though no indicators of such jostling looked, a pair of tweaks may toughen the experiment’s sensitivity to murky topic’s potential have an effect on, the researchers file in a paper to be printed in Physical Review Letters.
Scientists take into account murky topic must exist to story for big observations that counsel an unidentified source of mass within the cosmos. Darkish topic has evaded a large quantity of detection makes an strive, so astroparticle physicist Christopher Tunnell of Rice College in Houston used to be procuring for tag new ways to tag it.
Tunnell and colleagues realized that an existing experiment, on the origin designed to make sensitive gravitational measurements, may build ultralight murky topic. In the experiment, a magnet with a mass of lower than a milligram used to be suspended within a container made of a superconductor — a fabric that conducts electricity with out resistance. The magnet’s motion used to be monitored with a quantum diagram designed to measures adjustments in magnetic fields, identified as a SQUID. If ultralight murky topic exists and interacts with customary topic by arrangement of a brand new form of power, the murky topic wave would have subtly jiggled the magnet. Tunnell and colleagues reanalyzed the records from that experiment to tag murky topic’s have an effect on, but came all over no evidence of it.
The experiment used to be not basically the most sensitive tag ultralight murky topic. However it used to be optimized for gravitational measurements, not murky topic detection. So, some easy adjustments, corresponding to rising the mass of the magnet, may allow it to outperform a lot of suggestions. The researchers purpose to swap to a increased magnet with a mass of some hundred milligrams.
The premise, which melds quantum technologies with particle physics detection, came out of a climate instruct, where Tunnell met physicist Tjerk Oosterkamp of Leiden College within the Netherlands, a coauthor of the paper.
The improved experiment is to be known as POLONAISE, after a stylish Polish dance that the two coauthors did to preserve warm on the instruct.
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