Engineering of Form Factor in Rotationally Symmetric Photonic Cavities for Faster Axion Searches

Abstract: Form factor can be engineered in photonic cavities such that it dramatically increases the scan speed of axion haloscope detectors. Using higher-order modes of a photonic cavity, we can probe axions at larger mass ranges beyond the reach of current detectors that rely on conventional copper cavities. The main idea is to produce a higher-order mode with longitudinal field distribution that has relatively high amplitude away from both the cavity axis and the cavity walls such that it results in a relatively large form factor and maintains a high-quality factor. The detector scan speed significantly increases as it is proportional to the square of the form factor multiplied by the quality factor.