Almost a century ago, Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn firstproposedthe existence of dark matter.
In the meantime, uncountable masterminds have devised theories and designed experiments totrack down dark matter.
Nevertheless, nobody has actually seen a dark matter particle as of now.
And it still seems as though discovering dark matter is many centuries maybe even millennia away.
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With recent advances in quantum computing, however, dark matter physics might experience a massive boost.
The other pop in is the dark photon.
The only problem is that theorists are unable to predict what that frequency might be.
So, researchers are left to scan an enormous range of frequencies, one small band at a time.
Like an old radio receiver converts radio waves into sound, axion detectors convert axion waves into electromagnetic signals.
This process gets more complicated, though, because axions oscillate at two different frequencies simultaneously.
Thats one frequency, on the left-right spectrum.
Thats the second frequency, on the up-down spectrum.
Mathematically, one can put these two frequencies together by quadratically adding them.
This in our example, five steps is calledelectromagnetic field quadrature.
In reality, this is even harder.
Theaxion frequencymight be anywhere between 300 Hertz and 300 billion Hertz.
Thats a big, fat range to cover!
This bandwidth is limited by the so-calleduncertainty principle.
Or they might calculate the square root of five squared plus seven squared, which is roughly eight steps.
Thats a bandwidth of six steps.
The larger the bandwidth, though, the less often they will need to measure the frequency.
This bandwidth can be enlarged, thankfully, through a process calledquantum squeezing.
Though quantum squeezing, theyve already cut the time of observation, previously 10,000 years, in half.
With further improvements, they believe they can get the search for axions up to 10 times faster.
For this search, they fill one superconducting microwave cavity with photons and keep another as empty as possible.
According to theory, a small fraction of these photons should spontaneously turn into dark photons.
A small fraction of these dark photons would then turn back into regular photons, whichscientists can then detect.
There are two problems with these photon-detectors, though.
First, they return false positives every so often.
Second, when a photon enters the detector, its gone.
That means that its impossible to check whether a positive result is false positive or a true one.
Quantum measurements circumvent both problems.
And by measuring repeatedly, false positive results can be eliminated.
In addition, Fermilabs expertise in building cavities pays off by prolonging the lifetimes of photons.
Essentially, in low-quality cavities, photons disappear quickly.
In Fermilabs cavities, however, they survive a long time.
This durability makes it easier to repeat measurements again and again.
Without quantum techniques, detecting dark photons might even be impossible.
Nevertheless, the search is making progress.
To find invisible particles, scientists are using and developing the technology of the future.
Dark matter has already got a long and rich history.
Perhaps cutting-edge quantum tech will be what finally breaks the mystery.
This article was written byAri Jouryand was originally published onTowards Data Science.
you could read ithere.
