A team of scientists used an innovative technique called "quantum compression" to significantly
However, finding this promising particle is allis like looking for one quantum needle in a big haystack. And yet, in this process, rapid progress is possible. Researchers on a project called Haloscope at Yale Sensitive To Axion Cold Dark Matter (HAYSTAC) report that they have improved their hunting efficiency by overcoming a fundamental obstacle imposed by the laws of thermodynamics. The team of scientists includes scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
HAYSTAC - a sensor designed for searchesaxionic dark matter. It was developed by scientists from Yale University and is intended to narrow the search for particles of elusive dark matter, which may account for more than 80% of the total amount of matter in the universe. And the most interesting thing in this case is that the HAYSTAC detector is designed to search for dark matter in the form of axions, subatomic particles that currently exist only in theory and which are being searched for in several experiments, including the Axion Dark Matter Experimentis.
The new approach enables researchers to betterto separate the incredibly weak signals of possible axions from the random noise that exists in nature at extremely small scales, sometimes called quantum fluctuations. According to study co-author Konrad Lehnert, a NIST researcher at JILA, the team's chances of finding the axion over the next few years are still roughly equal to winning the lottery. But those chances will only get better.
Daniel Palken, co-author of the new article, explained,that what makes the axion so difficult to find makes it an ideal candidate for dark matter - it's light, carries no electrical charge, and almost never interacts with normal matter.
Some of the biggest obstacles with whichscientists collide, are the very laws of quantum mechanics, namely the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He limits the accuracy of scientists in their particle observations. In this case, the team cannot accurately measure two different properties of the light produced by the axions simultaneously.
However, the HAYSTAC team managed to bypass theseimmutable laws. It all comes down to using an instrument called Josephson's parametric amplifier. Scientists at JILA have developed a way to use these small devices to "squeeze" the light they received from the HAYSTAC experiment. Physicists do not need to accurately determine both properties of incoming light waves - only one of them. Compression takes advantage of this by shifting measurement uncertainties from one of these variables to the other.
To test this method, the researchers conducteda trial run at Yale University to find a particle in a specific mass range. According to scientists, they did not find it, but the experiment took half the time than usual.
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Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado