Karlsruhe 2024 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 18: Search for Dark Matter 1

T 18.2: Talk

Monday, March 4, 2024, 16:15–16:30, Geb. 30.35: HSI

A GridPix Detector for Axion Searches with IAXO — •Johanna von Oy, Klaus Desch, Jochen Kaminski, Tobias Schiffer, Sebastian Schmidt, and Markus Gruber — Physikalisches Institut der Universität Bonn

The particle axion was first introduced as a solution for the strong CP problem and has since then also become a good candidate for light dark matter. One experimental concept to discover the axion are helioscopes, which would convert solar axions into X-rays and detect those.

The International AXion Observatory (IAXO) has been proposed to be built as a next-generation helioscope. As a proof of concept and as its own experiment, the intermediate state BabyIAXO will be constructed at DESY in Hamburg.

After the solar axions have coupled to X-rays in the magnetic field of the helioscope, the X-rays are focused onto detectors. One of them is a gas-filled GridPix detector, which has a pixelated readout chip, the Timepix3, as its base with a perfectly aligned mesh on top. Thanks to this, individual electrons produced by the X-rays in the gas volume can be detected. This especially allows for the detection of axion-originated X-rays, with energies as low as ∼1 keV. Since the axion-photon coupling is predicted to be small and not a lot of signal events are expected, a very low background is desired and can, among other things, be achieved by building the detector from radiopure materials.

This talk will give a summary of the building principle and challenges of this GridPix detector for IAXO.

Keywords: IAXO; Axion; BabyIAXO