Graduate Student Seminar with Jonah Hoffman on Axions

The nature of dark matter is one of the most significant outstanding questions in physics. Partially due to their role in the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP problem, axions are widely considered to be one of the best motivated dark matter candidates. The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) is a high field, large volume microwave cavity experiment that uses electronics operating near the quantum limit to place the strictest constraints on the QCD axion. I will discuss the motivations for searching for dark matter axions, as well as how ADMX is able to efficiently constrain the axion parameter space at increasing frequencies.