Printing:This poster is 48” wide by 36” high. It’s designed to be printed on a large-format printer.

Customizing the Content:The placeholders in this poster are formatted for you. Type in the placeholders to add text, or click an icon to add a table, chart, SmartArt graphic, picture or multimedia file.To add or remove bullet points from text, just click the Bullets button on the Home tab.If you need more placeholders for titles, content or body text, just make a copy of what you need and drag it into place. PowerPoint’s Smart Guides will help you align it with everything else.Want to use your own pictures instead of ours? No problem! Just right-click a picture and choose Change Picture. Maintain the proportion of pictures as you resize by dragging a corner.

The Search for the Axion ParticleZachary Short| Mentor: Dipangkar Dutta(1) Advisor: Kris Madsen(1)| (1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS

INTRODUCTIONWith the development of the Strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), many solutions arose as to answer this problem in the idea of CP symmetry. Not a single likely answer was reached until 1977, when Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn developed the Peccei-Quinn theory as a solution, and thus theorized to the world a new particle known as an Axion.

THE EXPERIMENT

The Mississippi State Axion Search (MASS) is an attempt to improve the limit on the mass coupling parameter of the Axion by using a version of the Light Shining Through a Wall (LSW) Technique. The design features a sealed cavity partitioned by a lead wall with which radio power is channeled through; an antenna is located on the other end of the cavity to function as a receiver. All data signaled to the antenna is fed through to a data acquisition system. Based upon the theory of the Primakoff Effect, the Axions should supposedly be produced from and return to being photons in the presence of a strong magnetic field (which is present in one side of the cavity), leading to the basis of the LSW experiment.

METHODSBefore experimentation can take place, the validity of the cavity in design has had to have been addressed before hand. This means making sure that both antennas are able to operate optimally within the cavity, that absolutely zero noise outside the cavity would effect the data (or at least make it so that the noise would be accounted for), and make sure that the proper DAQ information was known for the cavity (otherwise the Axions would not be able to be compared and found). Having the maximum voltage known, the data should show that the Axions would appear as data excess. The range in which the Axions would be sought for would be 10-100meV.

RESULTS

Based upon multiple readjustments to the cavity, the experimental search for the axion has yet to begun. As of most recently, complications with the recently chosen antenna have resulted in the decision to lengthen the cavity as a whole. As for the results of my personal work, multiple voltage dividers and a band-pass filter have been created for the sake of data analysis. Also, a large amount of data was taken and plotted as to find the Q factor of the cavity; how this will be effected with the size readjustment is currently unknown.

DISCUSSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank both Dr. Dutta and Mr. Madsen, as well as the rest of MASS COLLABORATION for the opportunity to participate in this research. I would also like to thank the staff at Mississippi State University and Ms. Carr for arranging my research opportunity.

FUTURE WITH THE EXPERIMENT

A picture of the cavity and antennas. Graph for the gathered Q factor data.

Based upon current complications with the cavity, the actual data acquisition part of the experiment will most likely not begin until later within the year (unless a more efficient antenna solution is found). As for actual progress of the experiment. The experiment’s time span in which data will be acquired and analyzed is roughly estimated to be around 1-2 years.

With the completion of the experiment expected to end by around 2016, the outcome will most likely not result in the discovery of the axion particle itself. The experiment will serve as many axion-based experiments have before (such as the CERN Axion Solar Telescope mission that just ended), and most likely do its job to narrow down the parameters in which the Axion will be found. Surely, more Axion-based experiments will take place in the future until the particle is either found or disproven.

REFERENCES• Pierre Sikivie’s “The Pooltable Analogy to Axion Particles”• “’Higgsogenesis’ Proposed to Explain Dark Matter” By Eugenie Samuel

Reich and Nature Magazine• “Baryogenesis through split Higgsogenesis” Sacha Davidson, Ricardo

Gonz´alez Felipe, H. Serodio, Jo˜ao P. Silvab