Exploration of Wire Array Metamaterials for the Plasma Axion Haloscope

Abstract

A plasma haloscope has recently been proposed as a feasible approach to extend the search for dark matter axions above 10 GHz ($\sim$ 40 $\mu$eV), whereby the microwave cavity in a conventional axion haloscope is supplanted by a wire array metamaterial. As the plasma frequency of a metamaterial is determined by its unit cell, and is thus a bulk property, a metamaterial resonator of any frequency can be made arbitrarily large, in contrast to a microwave cavity which incurs a steep penalty in volume with increasing frequency. We have investigated the basic properties of wire array metamaterials through $S_{21}$ measurements in the 10 GHz range. Excellent agreement with theoretical models is found, by which we project achievable quality factors to be of order $10^{4}$ in an actual axion search. Furthermore, schemes for tuning the array over a usable dynamic range ($30\%$ in frequency) appear practical from an engineering perspective.