Scientists have created a detector of dark matter, which has already recorded the first signals

A group of engineers, consisting of representatives of the Competence Center for Physics of Dark Matter, together with representatives of the University of Western Australia, has successfully developed a completely new gravitational wave detector type.

And the new detector has already managed to record two signals, which may well turn out to be signals of dark matter. Also, the registered events can be signals from primordial black holes or, in general, a manifestation of external interference. I would like to emphasize that no other existing detector can register such signals.

New gravitational wave detector and its prospects

As you know, gravitational waves are nothing more than fluctuations in the gravitational field, which propagate literally throughout the entire cosmic space along the canvas of space-time. And these waves are formed due to the movement of objects with a huge mass (for example, black holes).

The very possibility of the existence of gravitational waves was predicted in general relativity more than a hundred years ago. But they were able to experimentally confirm their reality only in 2015 thanks to the use of supersensitive detectors (by the way, it was for the world's first registration of gravitational waves that the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2017 year).

So the gravitational disturbances recorded in 2015 were the result of the merger of two black holes into one.

Since then, instruments have repeatedly recorded gravitational perturbations, but, as the authors of the new detector, previous generations of devices were capable of detecting extremely low-frequency indignation. And the detection of high-frequency gravitational disturbances is a daunting task for modern physicists.

And the new detector is the first device of its kind, the task of which is to register precisely high-frequency disturbances. And, in fact, the detector is nothing more than a resonator of bulk acoustic waves, implemented on a quartz oscillator.

So a quartz disk vibrates at an increased frequency when acoustic waves pass through it. Since quartz has a piezoelectric effect, acoustic waves are transformed into electrical impulses that are received by special conductive plates attached to quartz disc.

These pads transmit the received pulses to a superconducting interference device, in which the signal is amplified so that the detector can fix it.

This entire structure is placed in radiation shields, the purpose of which is to protect against interference from external radiation, and is cooled to almost absolute zero.

Thus, the created detector turned out to be able to register gravitational disturbances with frequencies in the megahertz range.

Scientists tested the resulting device for 153 days, and during this period, two long sessions were performed, which took place in May and November 2019.

During these tests, the new detector was able to record two of the rarest high-frequency events. Disturbances that occurred in the 5-Hz range were recorded on May 12 and November 27, 2019.

Where exactly the recorded signals came from, scientists have no idea, but there is an assumption that dark energy particles, which are called WIMPs, entered into interactions with the created detector.

But scientists also do not exclude the possibility that the recorded interactions are the result of the presence of charged particles or the result of the usual manifestation of the accumulated mechanical stress in the detector itself or by an internal atomic process crystal.

Despite the fact that there is some element of uncertainty, scientists are still full of optimism. After all, the experiment showed for the first time that these devices can be used as highly sensitive detectors of gravitational waves.

Also, scientists plan to modify their detector and be able to register even higher-frequency disturbances. And scientists want to use the same quartz detector in conjunction with the muon detector of cosmic particles.

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