Layered Wire-Grid Haloscope for Millielectronvolt Axions and Dark Photons

Abstract

We propose MADGRID (Millielectronvolt Axions and Dark photons with layered GRIDs), a few wire grids in front of a mirror, tuned by their spacing, forming an epsilon-near-zero slab that radiates through its face into external optics. Unlike wire-plasma haloscopes, the signal need not cross the lossy medium to reach an antenna, and metal grids replace the disks of dielectric haloscopes. A 1 m$^2$ array in 10 T could probe axion-photon couplings below the CAST bound up to 1.4 meV with kinetic-inductance detectors, and KSVZ couplings over 0.8-3.9 meV with future photon counters. Without a magnet, it could probe dark photon mixings down to $3.4\times10^{-16}$.