Single Microwave Photon Counting in light dark matter detection

by Dr Giosuè Sardo Infirri (DFA)

Thursday 15 Jan 2026, 16:45 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

1/1-3 - Aula B (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio Marzolo)

In the context of Dark Matter direct searches experiments require high sensitivity to small signals. To detect such signals, we can only rely on superconducting circuits, which need to be operated in a protected distant environment, since they are not compatible with the strong magnetic fields required when axions are searched as Dark Matter candidates. This can be accomplished through the itinerant photon counter technique, with an architecture based on a transmon qubit coupled to two 2D resonators. This device has been implemented and is now under testing as readout in a haloscope experiment and will allow the seach for Dark Matter more than 20 times faster than classical approaches in the 5-10 GHz region