TY  - EJOUR
AU  - García-Cely, Camilo
AU  - Marsili, Luca
AU  - Ringwald, Andreas
AU  - Spector, Aaron D.
TI  - Polarimetric searches for axion dark matter and high-frequency gravitational waves using optical cavities
IS  - DESY-25-002
M1  - PUBDB-2024-07880
M1  - DESY-25-002
M1  - arXiv:2501.08382
PY  - 2025
N1  - 32 pages, 8 figures
AB  - We revisit birefringence effects associated with the evolution of the polarization of light as it propagates through axion dark matter or the background of a passing gravitational wave (GW). We demonstrate that this can be described by a unified formalism, highlighting a synergy between searches for axions and high-frequency GWs. We show that by exploiting this framework, the optical cavities used by the ALPS II experiment can potentially probe axion masses in the range m<sub>a</sub>  ∼ 10<sup>−9</sup> − 10<sup>−6</sup>  eV, offering competitive sensitivity with existing laboratory and astrophysical searches. Also building on this approach, we propose using these optical cavities to search for high-frequency GWs by measuring changes in the polarization of their laser. This makes it a promising method for exploring, in the near future, GWs with frequencies above 100 MHz and strain sensitivities on the order of 10<sup>−14</sup>  Hz<sup>−1/2</sup>. Such sensitivity allows the exploration of currently unconstrained parameter space, complementing other high-frequency GW experiments. This work contributes to the growing community investigating novel approaches for high-frequency GW detection.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)25
DO  - DOI:10.3204/PUBDB-2024-07880
UR  - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/619745
ER  -