A UdeS researcher has contributed to an international breakthrough that could help solve the mystery of the nature of dark matter
Sherbrooke, le 10 janvier 2025 – Dark matter, or the “invisible glue” that holds together the galaxies in the universe, has long been a mystery for scientists. However, a major new discovery to which Université de Sherbrooke physics professor Maia Vergniory contributed could help solve a piece of this cosmogonic puzzle.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble observed evidence showing that the universe has been expanding since its birth. For decades since then, however, the scientific community has been stymied over why the measured speed of this expansion far exceeds what the laws of physics determine should be possible given the observable mass of the universe. To explain this phenomenon, researchers in the 1930s began postulating the existence of “dark matter,” or a material that cannot be directly detected through conventional instruments and that makes up nearly 85% of the universe’s mass.
One hypothesis is that dark matter is made up of axions, which are theoretical particles that researchers have been hunting for over 40 years. An international team, which included UdeS Faculty of Science professor Maia Vergniory, has made a key experimental leap that gets science closer to proving their existence by showing that naturally existing particles can act like axions. Maia Vergniory is a co-author on this paper that will be published in the prestigious journal Science on Friday, January 10, 2025 and that heralds a major breakthrough that could shed light on a great scientific mystery of our time.
“This is an extraordinary advance that could not only explain a major mystery in our natural history but also lead to substantial technological advances,” explained Maia Vergniory. “The crystals we designed for our experiment guided photons along the edges of the crystal in a single direction without the photons veering off course. This is an essential property for data transmission, which could also reduce the risk of errors in quantum computing.”
The team first had to design geometric crystal structures made from an yttrium-iron garnet, which is a synthetic garnet used for its special magnetic and optical properties. The team observed that the photons moved in a single direction along the three-dimensional edges of these structures—i.e. up, forward and to the right—without problems such as backscatter. This behaviour of photons in the crystal could be how axions theoretically behave as well. “We are getting close to proving the existence of these particles through direct observation, which would be a major advance in our understanding of dark matter,” Maia Vergniory said.
To detect actual axions in the future, the research team’s crystal designs could be further optimized for experiments to detect photons converted from axions under extreme conditions, such as strong magnetic fields.
“I want to congratulate Maia Vergniory on this major contribution to an impressive research project,” said Armand Soldera, Dean of the Faculty of Science at UdeS. “This new publication in a prestigious journal attests to the excellence of her research and the creativity of the large international team behind this discovery. Her name and the name of our Institut quantique will always be associated with this achievement that scientists will be talking about for a long time to come.”
The research team that Maia Vergniory was part of included dozens of people on three continents. Led by Zhang Baile of Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), the team also included researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (Germany), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Donostia International Physics Center (Spain), University of the Basque Country and Basque Foundation for Science (Spain), Dongguan University of Technology (China), Nanjing University (China), Southern University of Science and Technology (China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Westlake University (China).
A researcher with a track record of innovation
Maia Vergniory is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Topological Quantum Matter. She is the co-creator of a relatively new field of chemistry and physics called topological quantum chemistry, which studies the electronic properties and behaviours of materials based on concepts from quantum theory and quantum topology. The new categories of high-performance materials that she is researching could potentially open up solutions to many major challenges, such as how we can reduce our energy consumption.
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