Internal Seminar: No light through the ALPS (experiment)

by Javier Redondo (MPI)

Thursday 22 Apr 2010, 11:15 → 12:15 Europe/Berlin

313 (Seminar room)

Rather than discussing the opacity of Europe's largest montain chain or the slow romanization of germanic tribes during the roman republic (or the reversed situation today) I will describe an experiment looking for very weakly interacting sub-eV mass particles (WISPs), the Any-Light-Particle-Search (ALPS) located at DESY Hamburg. The experiment looks for light shining through a wall, which would happen if photons oscillate into WISPs than then make it through a wall and oscillate back into photons afterwards. Different WISPs such as axion-like particles or hidden photons will be introduced and motivated. Time permitting, two further experimental efforts to search for WISPs will be discussed: a journey that should take us from Hamburg to the Sun, to the early universe and back.