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Searching for Dark Matter with Superconducting Qubits

Akash V. Dixit

Published Jun 1, 2021• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Dark matter is an enduring mystery in our quest to understand the fundamental constituents of our universe. Low mass bosons, such the axion or hidden photon, are compelling dark matter candidates. We leverage their potential interactions with electromagnetic fields, whereby the dark matter (of unknown mass) on rare occasion converts into a single photon, to devise a method of detecting these candidates. Current dark matter searches operating at microwave frequencies use a resonant cavity to coherently accumulate the field sourced by the dark matter and a near standard quantum limited (SQL) linear amplifier to read out the cavity signal. To further increase sensitivity to the dark matter signal and enable future searches, sub-SQL detection techniques are required. In this thesis, I report the development of a novel microwave photon counting technique and a new exclusion limit on hidden photon dark matter. We operate a superconducting qubit to make repeated quantum non-demolition measurements of cavity photons and apply a hidden Markov model analysis to reduce the noise to 15.7 dB below the quantum limit, with overall detector performance limited by a residual background of real photons. With the present device, we perform a hidden photon search and constrain the kinetic mixing angle to less than 1.68 X 10^{-15} in a band around 6.011 GHz (24.86 micro-eV) with an integration time of 8.33 s. This demonstrated noise reduction technique enables future dark matter searches to be sped up by a factor of 1300. By coupling a qubit to an arbitrary quantum sensor, more general sub-SQL metrology is possible with the techniques presented in this work.

DOI
10.6082/0743w-qtp31

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Dark matter is an enduring mystery in our quest to understand the fundamental constituents of our universe. Low mass bosons, such the axion or hidden photon, are compelling dark matter candidates. We leverage their potential interactions with electromagnetic fields, whereby the dark matter (of unknown mass) on rare occasion converts into a single photon, to devise a method of detecting these candidates. Current dark matter searches operating at microwave frequencies use a resonant cavity to coherently accumulate the field sourced by the dark matter and a near standard quantum limited (SQL) linear amplifier to read out the cavity signal. To further increase sensitivity to the dark matter signal and enable future searches, sub-SQL detection techniques are required. In this thesis, I report the development of a novel microwave photon counting technique and a new exclusion limit on hidden photon dark matter. We operate a superconducting qubit to make repeated quantum non-demolition measurements of cavity photons and apply a hidden Markov model analysis to reduce the noise to 15.7 dB below the quantum limit, with overall detector performance limited by a residual background of real photons. With the present device, we perform a hidden photon search and constrain the kinetic mixing angle to less than 1.68 X 10^{-15} in a band around 6.011 GHz (24.86 micro-eV) with an integration time of 8.33 s. This demonstrated noise reduction technique enables future dark matter searches to be sped up by a factor of 1300. By coupling a qubit to an arbitrary quantum sensor, more general sub-SQL metrology is possible with the techniques presented in this work.
Detection mechanisms for low mass bosonic dark matter candidates, such as the axion or hidden photon, leverage potential interactions with electromagnetic fields, whereby the dark matter (of unknown mass) on rare occasion converts into a single photon. Current dark matter searches operating at microwave frequencies use a resonant cavity to coherently accumulate the field sourced by the dark matter and a near standard quantum limited (SQL) linear amplifier to read out the cavity signal. To further increase sensitivity to the dark matter signal, sub-SQL detection techniques are required. Here we report the development of a novel microwave photon counting technique and a new exclusion limit on hidden photon dark matter. We operate a superconducting qubit to make repeated quantum nondemolition measurements of cavity photons and apply a hidden Markov model analysis to reduce the noise to 15.7 dB below the quantum limit, with overall detector performance limited by a residual background of real photons. With the present device, we perform a hidden photon search and constrain the kinetic mixing angle to ε≤1.68×10^{-15} in a band around 6.011 GHz (24.86 μeV) with an integration time of 8.33 s. This demonstrated noise reduction technique enables future dark matter searches to be sped up by a factor of 1,300. By coupling a qubit to an arbitrary quantum sensor, more general sub-SQL metrology is possible with the techniques presented in this Letter.
We propose a novel dark matter detection method utilizing the excitation of superconducting transmon qubits. Assuming the hidden photon dark matter of a mass of O(10) μeV, the classical wave-matter oscillation induces an effective ac electric field via the small kinetic mixing with the ordinary photon. This serves as a coherent drive field for a qubit when it is resonant, evolving it from the ground state towards the first-excited state. We evaluate the rate of such evolution and observable excitations in the measurements, as well as the search sensitivity to the hidden photon dark matter. For a selected mass, one can reach ε∼10^{-13}-10^{-12} (where ε is the kinetic mixing parameter of the hidden photon) with a few tens of seconds using a single standard transmon qubit. A simple extension to the frequency-tunable SQUID-based transmon enables the mass scan to cover the range of 4-40 μeV (1-10 GHz) within a reasonable length of run time. The scheme has great potential to extend the sensitivity towards various directions including being incorporated into the cavity-based haloscope experiments or the currently available multibit noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computer machines.
The manipulation of quantum states of light has resulted in significant advancements in both dark matter searches and gravitational wave detectors. Current dark matter searches operating in the microwave frequency range use nearly quantum-limited amplifiers. Future high frequency searches will use photon counting techniques to evade the standard quantum limit. We present a signal enhancement technique that utilizes a superconducting qubit to prepare a superconducting microwave cavity in a nonclassical Fock state and stimulate the emission of a photon from a dark matter wave. By initializing the cavity in an |n=4⟩ Fock state, we demonstrate a quantum enhancement technique that increases the signal photon rate and hence also the dark matter scan rate each by a factor of 2.78. Using this technique, we conduct a dark photon search in a band around 5.965 GHz (24.67 μeV), where the kinetic mixing angle ε≥4.35×10^{-13} is excluded at the 90% confidence level.
Quantum metrology has recently emerged as a powerful approach for dark matter (DM) searches, particularly using nonclassical bosonic states in microwave cavities that are sensitive to weak signals. Nonclassical cat states-macroscopic superpositions of coherent states featuring sub-Planck interference structures-offer promising advantages for high-precision measurements. However, their practical utility in DM search remains unexplored. Here, we report the first experimental application of four-component cat states within a high-quality superconducting microwave cavity to search for dark photons, a potential DM candidate. We demonstrate an 8.1-fold enhancement in the signal photon rate and constrain the dark photon kinetic mixing angle to an unprecedented ε<7.32×10^{-16} near 6.44 GHz (26.6 μeV). By employing a parametric sideband drive to actively tune the cavity frequency, we achieve dark photon searches and background subtraction across multiple frequency bins, yielding a sensitivity at the 10^{-16} level within a 100 kHz bandwidth. Our cat-assisted DM search and frequency-scanning techniques demonstrate substantial improvements over previous results, promising potential implications in quantum-enhanced searches for new physics.
We report on an improved microwave detection protocol for dark matter candidates such as the axion and the dark photon. We employ a superconducting transmon qubit dispersively coupled to a double-cavity system, enabling quantum non-demolition measurements of the photon occupation in a relatively short-lived storage cavity. To reduce the experimental cycle time and enhance sensitivity for axion and dark-photon searches, we operate this detector in a regime of increased qubit-cavity coupling, resulting in Stark shifts of 4.6 MHz. In this regime, conventional control pulses suffer from strong frequency-detuning sensitivity and photon-number-dependent errors. We address this limitation by implementing frequency-detuning-robust π/2π/2π/2 pulses (obtained by machine-learning optimization) that preserve high-fidelity qubit control over a bandwidth of approximately 20 MHz. We experimentally validate this protocol and demonstrate single-photon detection performance comparable to previous implementations, despite significantly reduced qubit coherence times and storage-cavity lifetimes. Using parity-based measurement sequences combined with a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) analysis, we achieve background rates on the order of O(20)\mathcal{O}(20)O(20) Hz. In the absence of a magnetic field, we derive exclusion limits on the dark photon model for dark matter, reaching a sensitivity to the kinetic mixing angle of ε95%∼1×10−14ε_{95\%} \sim 1\times10^{-14}ε95%​∼1×10−14 at 5.051 GHz. These results establish machine-learning robust control as a key enabler for faster, more scalable microwave quantum sensors for dark-matter searches.
This thesis presents the development of an axion detector based on a microwave cavity coupled to quantum devices: a 3D superconducting circuit resilient to magnetic fields and a magnetic crystal. Because of the weak power of the expected signal, current detectors are limited by the standard quantum limit (SQL). Together with the large possible mass range of axion, this makes axion detection extremely slow. The quantum circuit of our detector allows us to escape the SQL by measuring only the cavity phase, while the magnetic material provides tunability to the detector so that a large mass range can be scanned. We show that this technology could be used to increase the speed of axion detection and would also give further information on the axion field.