Sensitivity of a closed dielectric haloscope to axion dark matter
Abstract
We present a method to determine the sensitivity of a closed dielectric haloscope to axion dark matter. Dielectric haloscopes aim to probe the theoretically well-motivated axion mass range of ~26 eV to ~500 eV by utilizing a stack of dielectric disks and a mirror to enhance the axion-photon conversion within an external magnetic field. Their conversion volume is nearly axion-mass independent, thereby favoring large-scale designs to increase sensitivity. The large volume causes simulations to be computationally expensive and time-consuming. This paper presents a simple model that can be used to determine the sensitivity of the experiment with minimal computational resources. The model is able to describe the electromagnetic response of a closed dielectric haloscope, accounting for realistic geometric imperfections, as well as the noise introduced by the receiver system. It is applied to data taken with a MAgnetized Disk and Mirror Axion Experiment (MADMAX) prototype within the 1.6 T Morpurgo magnet at CERN. This work underpins the first axion dark matter search using a dielectric haloscope and provides the foundation for future dark matter searches with MADMAX.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.05006,
title = {Sensitivity of a closed dielectric haloscope to axion dark matter},
author = {A. Ivanov and D. Leppla-Weber and B. Ary dos Santos Garcia and D. Bergermann and H. Byun and A. Caldwell and V. Dabhi and C. Diaconu and J. Diehl and G. Dvali and B. Döbrich and J. Egge and E. Garutti and S. Heyminck and T. Houdy and F. Hubaut and J. Jochum and A. Kazemipour and Y. Kermaidic and S. Knirck and M. Kramer and D. Kreikemeyer-Lorenzo and C. Krieger and C. Lee and X. Li and A. Lindner and B. Majorovits and J. Maldonado and A. Martini and A. Miyazaki and E. Öz and P. Pralavorio and G. Raffelt and J. Redondo and A. Ringwald and J. Schaffran and A. Schmidt and L. Stankewitz and F. Steffen and C. Strandhagen and I. Usherov and H. Wang and G. Wieching},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.05006},
year = {2026}
}