A Search for Halo Axions

Abstract

The axion is an unusually well motivated dark matter candidate which is the Goldstone Boson associated with spontaneous breaking of the PQ symmetry of QCD. I describe an experiment to search for axions in our Galactic halo using a high Q resonant cavity coupled to ultra-low-noise receiver electronics. I discuss the analysis of the first production data and present the first results of the experiment. At 90\% confidence KSVZ axions of mass 2.9 to 3.3 micro eV are excluded as the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy. This thesis was submitted in 1997 at MIT. It has been used as a reference in many subsequent axion experiments, and it has been suggested that it should be placed on the archive as a reference and a resource. I am complying with this request.