The dark matter radio

That's a new one on me.

The dark matter radio makes use of a bizarre concept of quantum mechanics known as wave-particle duality: Every particle can also behave like a wave.Take, for example, the photon: the massless fundamental particle that carries the electromagnetic force. Streams of them make up electromagnetic radiation, or light, which we typically describe as waves—including radio waves.

The dark matter radio will search for dark matter waves associated with two particular dark matter candidates. It could find hidden photons—hypothetical cousins of photons with a small mass. Or it could find axions, which scientists think can be produced out of light and transform back into it in the presence of a magnetic field.

At its heart is an electric circuit with an adjustable resonant frequency. If the device were tuned to a frequency that matched the frequency of a dark matter particle wave, the circuit would resonate. Scientists could measure the frequency of the resonance, which would reveal the mass of the dark matter particle. The idea is to do a frequency sweep by slowly moving through the different frequencies, as if tuning a radio from one end of the dial to the other.

“Shielding the radio from unwanted radiation is very important and also quite challenging,” Irwin says. “In fact, we would need a several-yards-thick layer of copper to do so. Fortunately we can achieve the same effect with a thin layer of superconducting metal.”

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/a-radio-for-dark-matter?utm_source=main_feed_click&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=main_feed&utm_content=click
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/a-radio-for-dark-matter?utm_source=main_feed_click&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=main_feed&utm_content=click