A Penning trap single-photon counter for axion detection
Abstract
Discovering the microscopic composition of dark matter is one of the most important open problems in physics today. Axions are a leading candidate to be dark matter; however, a search of the full range of all likely axion masses is hampered by the standard quantum noise limit. This makes haloscope searches for axions with masses above 0.1 meV unfeasible with current technologies. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new photon counting technique designed to operate at 30-60 GHz for detecting axions with masses between 0.124 meV and 0.248 meV, based on a single electron in a Penning trap. The electron cyclotron mode absorbs microwave photons, and, via the continuous Stern-Gerlach effect, this absorption imparts a measurable phase shift onto the axial motion. In this paper, we comprehensively analyze this photon detection method. We introduce a new type of fast, phase-sensitive axial detection technique, using axial-magnetron parametric amplification to overcome detector Johnson noise and cancel associated frequency shifts. This method may find other applications in precision Penning trap frequency measurements. We compare the efficiency of the electron single-photon counter with an ideal device, and find that our proposed photon counter has sufficient performance to search for high mass axions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.05472,
title = {A Penning trap single-photon counter for axion detection},
author = {Jack A. Devlin and Marko L. Wojtkowiak and Shreyak R. Banhatti and He Zhang and Jiacheng Shi and Toren S. Dofher and Jonathan M. H. Gosling and Michael R. Tarbutt and Richard C. Thompson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05472},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
29 pages, 15 figures. In this version: i) Additional references added on pages 1 & 5. ii) Section VI expanded to consider the effect of the coupling constant "g" on the detection and exclusion efficiency, plotted in Fig. 12 and Fig. 14 b). iii) Same parameters used in Figs. 10, 11 and 14 as listed in Tab. II for consistency. iv) Minor changes to section VII