Studying fake dark matter to calibrate the search for real dark matter
MAR 18, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024170
New Scientist : Dark matter is hypothetical, invisible stuff that cosmologists invoke to explain why the universe appears to contain much less matter than their calculations say it should, and some think that it is made up of hypothetical particles called axions.Even though we haven’t yet found a genuine axion, however, materials called topological insulators can be used to mimic them, say Shoucheng Zhang and colleagues at Stanford University, California. Magnetic fluctuations in the materials produce a field just like an axion field, his team found."They are an exact mathematical analogy,” says Zhang, who presented his work at the March APS meeting .
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
