UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

Reyco Henning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Dark Matter, Quantum Computers, and all that.”

The international effort to directly detect and determine the nature of cosmic dark matter is experiencing a transition. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the traditionally preferred candidates, have come under pressure recently. The Large Hadron Collider has failed to discover a new physical mechanism that would produce WIMPs, and direct detection experiments have come up empty. In this talk I will discuss the axion, which is the leading contender to the WIMP model. A fascinating aspect of searches for axions, which I will also discuss, is the overlap in experimental techniques with radiation detection, quantum computing, NMR, and optics. I will conclude by presenting recent results from two experiments with UNC connections, the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR and ABRACADABRA, in the search for axion dark matter.