Aggarwal

The Aggarwal Group at the University of California, Davis is recruiting a postdoctoral scholar researcher to help develop a new tabletop radio-frequency gravitational-wave detector aimed at searches for the axion, a leading dark matter candidate. The project combines ultralight dark matter physics, gravitational-wave concepts, and advanced experimental methods. The detector design is a Fabry-Perot Michelson interferometer with an optically trapped micro-disk in each arm cavity, and it is also intended as a platform for sub-standard-quantum-limit sensing techniques such as squeezed-light methods. The postdoc will take a leading role in the research and development effort behind this hybrid quantum sensing scheme. The successful candidate will work within a precision-measurement group at UC Davis that focuses on ultralight dark matter and gravitational-wave searches. The group is also involved in ARIADNE, which searches for short-range spin-dependent forces mediated by the QCD axion, and in the LIGO collaboration, where dark matter searches use LIGO instruments and data. The appointment includes collaboration with Prof. Andrew Geraci’s group at Northwestern, which is developing a companion detector with the goal of operating the two systems jointly. The advert also highlights possible travel to Chicago and the opportunity for extended training periods at LIGO observatories to learn commissioning techniques directly relevant to the project. This position is supported by a new DOE award for hybrid quantum sensing research and offers a research environment centered on instrumentation, interferometry, and fundamental-physics measurements at the intersection of dark matter and gravitational-wave science.