A haloscope of the QUAX–$a\gamma$ experiment, composed of an high-$Q$ resonant cavity immersed in a 8 T magnet and cooled to $\sim 4.5\mathrm{K}$ is operated to search for galactic axions with mass $m_a\simeq 42.8\mu \mathrm{eV}$, not accessible to other running experiments. The design of the cavity with hollow dielectric cylinders concentrically inserted in a OFHC Cu cavity, allowed us to maintain a loaded quality-factor $\mathrm{Q}\sim 300000$ during the measurements in presence of magnetic field. Through the cavity tuning mechanism it was possible to modulate the resonance frequency of the haloscope in the region $10.35337-10.35345\mathrm{GHz}$ and thus acquire different datasets at different resonance frequencies. Acquiring each datasets for about 50 minutes, combining them and correcting for the axion’s signal estimation-efficiency, we set a limit on the axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma \gamma }<0.731\times {10}^{-13}{\mathrm{GeV}}^{-1}$ with the confidence level set at 90%.

We report an axion dark matter search with a haloscope equipped with a microwave photon counter. The haloscope is a tunable high quality factor three-dimensional microwave cavity placed in a magnetic field. The photon counter, operated cyclically, maps an incoming microwave photon onto the state of a superconducting transmon qubit. The measurement protocol continuously monitors the power emitted by the haloscope cavity as well as the dark count background and enables tuning of the cavity frequency to probe different axion masses. With this apparatus, we enhance by a factor of 20 the search speed that can be reached with quantum-limited linear amplifiers and set a new standard for probing the existence of axions with resonant detectors above 5 GHz.

A photon-magnon hybrid system can be realized by coupling the electron spin resonance of a magnetic material to a microwave cavity mode. The quasiparticles associated with the system dynamics are the cavity magnon polaritons, which arise from the mixing of strongly coupled magnons and photons. We illustrate how these particles can be used to probe the magnetization of a sample with a remarkable sensitivity, devising suitable spin-magnetometers, which ultimately can be used to directly assess oscillating magnetic fields. Specifically, the capability of cavity magnon polaritons of converting magnetic excitations to electromagnetic ones allows for translating to magnetism the quantum-limited sensitivity achieved by state-of-the-art microwave detectors. Here, we employ hybrid systems composed of microwave cavities and ferrimagnetic spheres to experimentally implement two types of novel spin-magnetometers.

The hypothetical axion particle is an excellent cold dark matter candidate. Models predict an axion mass of tens of μeV (GHz frequency range). It is in principle possible to convert galactic axions into a monochromatic microwave signal or to detect them with an electron-spin flip. In both cases, to measure the resulting vanishing signal ( $P\approx10^{-23} W$ ) a high-Q cavity is needed, with $Q\sim10^6$ . Superconducting RF technology can satisfy the requirement of operation in moderate-to-high DC magnetic fields. In this contribution we present an experimental study of the behavior of superconducting cavities in the vortex state. This study has been realized using 14 GHz Cu-NbTi and $Cu-NbTiN_x$ film cavities. A new cavity geometry is presented. We measured the magnetic field dependence of the Q-factor and $\Delta f_{res}/f_{res}$ where $f_{res}$ is resonant frequency, in the range B=0-6 T at 4.2 K. Also Q versus temperature at fixed B in ZFC and FC setups has been considered. A comparison was made with Cu and Nb cylindrical bulk cavities. The data for Q(B) were analyzed in terms of the elastic and dissipative motion of flux lines, thus including flux flow and flux pinning. We discuss whether the field-induced quasiparticle contribution is relevant in our field and temperature range.