PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 314 - The European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP2017) - Dark Matter (Parallel Session). Coveners: Enrique Araujo; Caterina Doglioni; Alfredo Urbano. Scientific Secretary: Caterina Braggio.
Possible resonance effect of dark matter axions in SNS Josephson junctions
C. Beck
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: October 19, 2017
Published on: March 20, 2018
Abstract
Dark matter axions can generate peculiar effects in special types of Josephson junctions, so-called SNS junctions. One can show that the axion field equations in a Josephson environment allow for very small oscillating supercurrents, which manifest themselves as a tiny wiggle in the I-V curve, a so-called Shapiro step, which occurs at a frequency given by the axion mass. The effect is very small but perfectly measurable in modern nanotechnological devices. In this paper I will summarize the theory and then present evidence that candidate Shapiro steps of this type have indeed been seen in several independent condensed matter experiments. Assuming the observed tiny Shapiro steps are due to axion flow then these data point to an axion mass of $(106 \pm 6)\mu$eV, consistent with what is expected for the QCD axion. In addition to the above small Shapiro resonance effects at frequencies in the GHz region one also expects to see broad-band noise effects at much lower frequencies. Overall this approach provides a novel pathway for the future design of new types of axionic dark matter detectors. The resonant Josephson data summarized in this paper are consistent with a 'vanilla' axion
with a coupling constant $f_a=\sqrt{v_{EW}m_{Pl}}=5.48 \cdot 10^{10}$GeV given by the geometric average of the electroweak symmetry breaking scale $v_{EW}$ and the Planck mass $m_{Pl}$.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.314.0058
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