Quantum-enhanced interferometry for axion searches

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum-enhanced interferometry experiment using squeezed light to search for axions in the galactic halo, aiming to improve sensitivity and set new constraints on axion-photon coupling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup with coupled optical cavities and squeezed states to detect axions in a previously unexplored mass range, with potential for scaling up.

Findings

Potential to constrain axion-photon coupling to ~10^{-18} GeV^{-1}

Detects axions in the mass range 10^{-16} eV to 10^{-8} eV

Scalable design for larger detectors

Abstract

We propose an experiment to search for axions and axion-like-particles in the galactic halo using quantum-enhanced interferometry. This proposal is related to the previously reported ideas (Phys. Rev. D 98, 035021, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 161301, Phys. Rev. D 100, 023548) but searches for axions in the mass range from $10^{-16}$ eV up to $10^{-8}$ eV using two coupled optical cavities. We also show how to apply squeezed states of light to enhance the sensitivity of the experiment similar to the gravitational-wave detectors. The proposed experiment has a potential to be further scaled up to a multi-km long detector. We show that such an instrument has a potential to set constrains of the axion-photon coupling coefficient of $\sim 10^{-18}$ GeV$^{-1}$ for axion masses of $10^{-16}$ eV or detect the signal.