Adjusting optical cavity birefringence with wavelength tunable laser for axion searches

Axions have attracted attention as promising candidates for dark matter (DM). Although axions have been intensively searched for, they have not been observed yet. Recently, novel experiments to search for axion DM have been proposed that use optical cavities to amplify polarization rotation of laser light induced by the axion-photon interaction. One such experiment employs a ring cavity composed of four mirrors. However, its sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:msub><a:mi>g</a:mi><a:mrow><a:mi>a</a:mi><a:mi>γ</a:mi></a:mrow></a:msub></a:math> in the low axion mass region is limited due to a reflection phase difference between s- and p-polarizations. In this paper, we propose a new method to improve the sensitivity using zero phase shift mirrors and a wavelength tunable laser. Moreover, the laser makes it easier to scan the high axion mass region by tuning the reflection phase difference between s- and p-polarizations. We experimentally confirmed that the phase difference generated upon reflection on a zero phase shift mirror satisfied the requirement of <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:mrow><c:mn>8.6</c:mn><c:mo>×</c:mo><c:msup><c:mrow><c:mn>10</c:mn></c:mrow><c:mrow><c:mo>−</c:mo><c:mn>3</c:mn></c:mrow></c:msup><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:mi>deg</c:mi></c:mrow></c:math>, which corresponds to the half width at half maximum (HWHM) of the cavity for p-polarization with the mirror fixed on a folded cavity and a wavelength tunable laser.