PHYS/ASTR Colloquium: "Echos of the Early Universe in Axion Haloscopes" - Dr. Nick Rodd (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Echos of the Early Universe in Axion Haloscopes

The coming decade will bring dramatic improvement in the axion dark- matter program as new experimental designs move beyond the proof of principle stage. In this talk I will outline two signals beyond dark matter that these instruments could discover. The first is a population of relativistic axions that were produced in the early universe and persist as a residual Cosmic axion Background (CaB). The second is high-frequency gravitational waves; I will outline how exploiting an analogy between axion and gravitational-wave electrodynamics allows for axion haloscopes to be converted into gravitational-wave telescopes, which could even be used to detect individual gravitons.

Nick Rodd is a Divisional Fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. His research goal is to determine what makes up the dark matter of our Universe. Nick primarily focuses on ultralight wave dark matter and the search for dark matter in astrophysical datasets, an approach known as indirect detection. He also works on effective field theory, statistics, and collider physics.