Research Areas - (1) Single-Electron Penning Trap Photon Counter for Axions

Full path: Physics > Quantum Sensing > Dark Matter Detection > Axion / ALP Sensing > Penning Trap Axion/Dark Matter Search > Single-Electron Penning Trap Photon Counter for Axions

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics – QOLS / Centre for Cold Matter | Centre for Cold Matter – Quantum Technology & Dark Matter (Devlin) @ Imperial
Summary:

Devlin is a Royal Society URF at the Centre for Cold Matter building a new experiment to detect axion and dark matter particles. His prior work at CERN's BASE collaboration (Penning trap antiproton experiment) used the ultra-sensitive superconducting detection circuit of a cryogenic Penning trap to set new constraints on axion-like particle couplings to photons (~2.79 neV/c² range; PRL 2021). At Imperial he is developing a Penning trap single-photon counter concept using a single trapped electron to detect 30–60 GHz photons from axion-photon conversion in a strong magnetic field (arXiv 2601.05472, March 2026), targeting axion masses of 124–248 μeV. This approach could overcome the standard quantum noise limit that hampers conventional haloscope searches at high mass. Active PDRA posting open May 2025.