FLASH
(Finuda magnet for Light Axion Search with Haloscope)
The FINUDA (FIsica NUcleare at DAΦNE) magnet for Light Axion SearcH (FLASH) experiment, a new haloscope to be built and operated at the Frascati National Laboratories of INFN (INFN-LNF), will probe the existence of cosmic axions of masses around 10−6 eV. This window is currently unexplored and lies in between the mass range that is actively scanned in present and near-future searches by ADMX , BabyIAXO and DMRadio collaborations. In this view, FLASH will close the mass gap in the range of the μeV where the QCD axion is expected to provide the DM budget. As indicated by the name, the realization of the haloscope is based on the reuse of the 3 m diameter superconducting magnet of the FINUDA experiment that took data at DAΦNE until 2007.
FLASH will also be able to constrain cosmological scenarios in which exotic particles other than the QCD axion play a role. One such example includes axion-like particles (ALPs). Alternative scenarios predict that the DM is composed of scalar rather than pseudoscalar particles. Dilaton and the chameleon are two examples of scalar fields. Another avenue that motivates the FLASH experiment is related to hidden photon (HP) Dark Matter. In fact, haloscope experiments can efficiently constrain the mixing parameter describing the coupling between the SM photon and the cosmic HP in the viable phenomenological window. Finally, it has been recently realized that resonant cavities could also serve the purpose of detecting gravitational waves (GWs) signals within the band ranges falling in the MHz-GHz region. High-frequency GWs in the kHz range from coalescent compact objects or making up a stochastic background have been sought for in past experiments Explorer at CERN and Nautilus at INFN-LNF. The FLASH experiment can probe the GW bandwidth ∼(100−300) MHz.
Here the conceptual design report of the experiment.
