Dr. Bradley Kavanagh The Hunt for Axion Dark Matter

Cosmology shows that ordinary matter makes up only ~16% of the Universe, while the rest is Dark Matter (DM), observed through its gravitational effects. Detecting DM in the lab would be transformative, but since many particle candidates exist, theory is essential to guide the search.

I will present the motivation for the Axion, a yet-undetected pseudo-scalar particle first hypothesised in the 1970s to solve issues in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Remarkably, these ‘QCD axions’ are also natural Dark Matter candidates, motivating a growing international hunt. I will summarise constraints from cosmology and astrophysics, highlight detection prospects, and describe lab-based searches, including the proposed Canfranc Axion Detection Experiment (CADEx), a novel and challenging search in the 330–460 μeV mass range, a well-motivated but unexplored region of Dark Matter parameter space.