Thesis
A theoretical study of axion-like particle production by lasers and plasmas
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2026
- Thesis identifier
- T18127
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201878191
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Axions/axion-like-particles (ALPs) are hypothetical particles, with their initial proposal aimed at solving the strong charge parity problem. They are now prominent candidates for dark matter and other astrophysical phenomena. Despite a significant international effort, ALPs have remained undetected. In this thesis, we provide a theoretical investigation into methods of producing substantial axion fluxes in laboratory contexts. We derive the axion field that is produced from the overlap of two counterpropagating lasers. This is done using the framework of axion-photon oscillations which are akin to neutrino flavour oscillations. One laser (pump) is assumed to have a much larger amplitude than the other laser (probe) and their polarisations are chosen to maximise the axion flux. Conditions relating the energy of each field, laser and axion, are derived and govern the allowed axion parameters. This context allows for larger axion masses to be probed than what can typically be done using light-shining-through-a-wall experiments which suffer from decoherence for larger axion masses. For reasonable laser parameters, the theoretical produced axion flux is calculated and compared with that theoretically produced at the OSQAR experiment at CERN as well as at the ALPS II experiment at DESY. We expand on previous work related to axion production via a longitudinally magnetised plasma wave, improving its accuracy. We account for the modal dependency of the axion’s energy flux before calculating the average axion number flux. We demonstrate how the plasma frequency can be manipulated to finetune the produced flux and calculate that the produced axion flux, for reasonable laboratory parameters, is on the order of Nφ ∼ 1034 m−2s−1, for axion parameters in the range where ADMX is searching for a dark-matter QCD axion. Lastly, the axion flux produced from an electron, in a superposition of up and down spins, accelerated in a magnetic field, is calculated. An analytical derivation for the axion flux is illustrated, when the electron is in either the first or second level above its ground state, with numerical results given for larger mode numbers. The produced flux is found to have a significant amount of transverse spread in addition to having two distinct parameter regions which show either a sub-linear growth with mode number or decrease after the initial few modes.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Jarozszynski, Dino
- Noble, Adam
- Resource Type
- DOI
Relations
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PDF of thesis T18127 | 2026-09-17 | Public | Download |