Visions for table-top dark matter experiments

Conference: “Visions for table-top experiments on dark matter”

Date: Feb 26th—27th, 2019

Place: Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo

One of the greatest challenges in modern physics concerns the nature of dark matter. A pressing endeavour is to identify and characterise any non-gravitational interactions in the laboratory. A wave of new dark matter experiments are ongoing or proposed, which are typified by their utilisation of ultra-high precision techniques, often with "table-top" sized equipment. They offer new opportunities to test dark matter over a very large mass range, and probe different theoretical constructs. The field is ripe with new ideas and anticipation of discoveries.

This workshop will focus on the prospects for direct detection of dark matter via a wide variety of high-precision table-top experiments. It will address both theoretical and experimental developments in this emerging field, and the opportunities for improving—or finding new—search strategies.


Topics include:

  • Spin precession experiments for ultralight dark matter
  • Optical magnetometers for exotic physics searches
  • Atomic clocks in search of dark matter
  • High finesse Fabry-Pérot cavities
  • Ultra-cold atoms and polyatomic molecules for dark matter detection
  • SQUID sensors for axion and hidden photon searches
  • Detection of single infrared quanta from lattice defects and in magnetic bubble chambers
  • Dark matter searches with crystal cavities and an optical lattice clock
  • Precision probes of fundamental constants of nature
  • Fundamental properties of particles including matter - antimatter comparisons
  • Spectroscopy of crystal defects
  • Radial velocity spectroscopy for precision measurements of stellar accelerations and the local dark matter density
  • ...


Confirmed Speakers:

Shioji Asai (Tokyo)

Dmitry Budker (Mainz/Berkeley)

John Doyle (Harvard)

Hidetoshi Katori (Tokyo)

Shuta Nakajima (Kyoto)

Surjeet Rajendran (Berkeley)

Yannis Semertzidis (IBS Korea)

Yevgeny Stadnik (Mainz)

Stefan Ulmer (CERN/RIKEN)

Ron Walsworth (Harvard-Smithsonian)

Jun Ye (NIST/JILA)

Organizers: Alex Kusenko (UCLA/Kavli IPMU), Tom Melia (Kavli IPMU), Hirosi Ooguri (Kavli IPMU/Caltech), Tadayuki Takahashi (Kavli IPMU)

Email: ttdm_loc@ipmu.jp