Searching For Dark Matter With World's Biggest Detector
Researchers from Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nihon Universities have developed a new theoretical framework to use the Earth-ionosphere cavity as a giant detector for dark matter. By analyzing a decade of geomagnetic data, they aim to identify signals from axions and dark photons that conventional laboratory magnets cannot detect.
Why it matters
This innovative approach could provide a breakthrough in identifying the elusive particles that constitute a significant portion of the universe's energy.
Activity Database on Education and Research
Kyoto, Japan -- Dark matter's existence is all but certain -- astronomers believe it makes up about a quarter of the universe's total energy content -- yet its true identity has eluded us for decades. Two of the leading candidates for dark matter are the hypothetical particles ultralight axions and dark photons , which in the range studied here would be some 19 to 21 orders of magnitude lighter than the electron.
Conventional axion searches tend to involve converting them into photons with the help of strong laboratory magnets. However, research in a laboratory inherently limits the space over which such a field can be applied. A collaborative team of researchers from Kyoto University, Hiroshima University, and Nihon University realized that, by contrast, Earth's own magnetic field spans a scale no laboratory could match.
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