26 June 2023

Photo: DESY

A dipole magnet for the ALPS II experiment is installed in the HERA tunnel.

In Hamburg we have quite an impressive group of axion experiments and recently Quantum Universe member Andreas Ringwald gave an overview talk about those at the famous Moriond conference. Axions were, like many other particles, originally a solution to fix a theory problem (in this case the fact that the neutron does not have a large electromagnetic dipole moment like the Standard Model would predict), but axions also turn out to be a great dark matter candidate, and axions could even explain the fact that charge is quantised! The ALPS experiment is one of the many experiments that the Quantum Universe Cluster of Excellence is involved in. Other important experiments are MADMAX and BabyIAXO. ALPS tries to measure Axion-Like-Particles (ALPs) by relying on the axion's property to make photons when in a magnetic field. This means that light could shine through a wall if there is a magnet and axions involved, so we are testing this. The ALPS experiment recently started to take data.