%0 Journal Article
%A García-Cely, Camilo
%A Marsili, Luca
%A Ringwald, Andreas
%A Spector, Aaron D.
%T Polarimetric searches for axion dark matter and high-frequency gravitational waves using optical cavities
%J Physical review / D
%V 112
%N 2
%@ 2470-0010
%C Ridge, NY
%I American Physical Society
%M PUBDB-2025-00177
%M DESY-25-002
%M arXiv:2501.08382
%P 023031
%D 2025
%Z 32 pages, 8 figures
%X 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.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%R 10.1103/26vg-wcfx
%U https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/622091