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Updated: May 5, 2026

Hyperpolarized Xenon for NMR and MRI Applications
Published on: September 6, 2012
First Results from the Axion Dark-Matter Birefringent Cavity (ADBC) Experiment
Swadha Pandey1, Evan D Hall1, Matthew Evans1
1LIGO Laboratory, Department of Physics, <a href="https://ror.org/042nb2s44">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</a>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Abstract:
Axions and axionlike particles are strongly motivated dark-matter candidates that are the subject of many current ground based dark-matter searches. We present first results from the Axion Dark-Matter Birefringent Cavity (ADBC) experiment, which is an optical bow-tie cavity probing the axion-induced birefringence of electromagnetic waves. Our experiment is the first optical axion detector that is tunable and quantum noise limited, making it sensitive to a wide range of axion masses. We have iteratively probed the axion mass ranges 40.9-43.3 neV/c^{2}, 49.3-50.6 neV/c^{2}, and 54.4-56.7 neV/c^{2}, and found no dark-matter signal. On average, we constrain the axionlike particle and photon coupling at the level g_{aγγ}≤1.9×10^{-8} GeV^{-1}. We also present prospects for future axion dark-matter detection experiments using optical cavities.
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