First mechanical realization of a tunable dielectric haloscope for the MADMAX axion search experiment

MADMAX, a future experiment to search for axion dark matter,is based on a novel detection concept called the dielectrichaloscope. It consists of a booster composed of several dielectricdisks positioned with μm precision. A prototype composed ofone movable disk was built to demonstrate the mechanical feasibilityof such a booster in the challenging environment of the experiment:high magnetic field to convert the axions into photons and cryogenictemperature to reduce the thermal noise. It was tested both inside astrong magnetic field up to 1.6 T and at cryogenic temperaturesdown to 35 K. The measurements of the velocity and positioningaccuracy of the disk are shown and are found to match the MADMAXrequirements.