Production and detection of very light bosons in the HERA tunnel

Abstract

There are strong theoretical arguments in favour of the existence of very light scalar or pseudoscalar particles beyond the Standard Model which have, so far, remained undetected, due to their very weak coupling to ordinary matter. We point out that after HERA has been decommissioned, there arises a unique opportunity for searches for such particles: a number of HERA's four hundred superconducting dipole magnets might be recycled and used for laboratory experiments to produce and detect light neutral bosons that couple to two photons, such as the axion. We show that, in this way, laser experiments searching for photon regeneration or polarization effects in strong magnetic fields can reach a sensitivity which is unprecedented in pure laboratory experiments and exceeds astrophysical limits from stellar evolution considerations.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Particle Dark Matter and Solar Axion Searches with a small germanium detector at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory
• Search for sub-electronvolt solar axions using coherent conversion of axions into photons in magnetic field and gas helium

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• Optimizing Light-Shining-through-a-Wall Experiments for Axion and other WISP Searches
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• Extending the reach of axion-photon regeneration experiments towards larger masses with phase shift plates
• Axion interpretation of the PVLAS data?
• Production and Detection of Axion-Like Particles at the VUV-FEL: Letter of Intent
• Improving the Discovery Potential of Future Light-Shining-through-a-Wall Experiments