Their analysis builds on a recurring joke arc in the television series The Big Bang Theory where fictional physicists Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter struggle to work out axion production in a fusion device but never reach a solution.
Axions are hypothetical very light particles that are leading candidates to account for dark matter which appears to make up most of the matter in the universe while ordinary visible matter contributes only a smaller share.
Dark matter has not been directly detected yet it reveals itself through gravitational effects such as the motions of galaxies and stars that cannot be explained by visible matter alone.
In the new study published in the Journal of High Energy Physics the team considers a large scale fusion reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium with a lithium lined vessel similar to designs under development in southern France where a high flux of neutrons is expected during operation.
Jure Zupan explained that neutrons streaming from the fusion core will interact with materials in the reactor walls and trigger nuclear reactions that can generate new particles including possible axion like states.
A second production channel arises when neutrons scatter off other particles and lose energy emitting radiation through a process known as bremsstrahlung or braking radiation which can also lead to the creation of new light particles.
Zupan contrasted this with the whiteboard calculations shown in The Big Bang Theory episodes which estimated that axions produced in a fusion reactor by the same mechanisms operating in the sun would be much harder to detect than axions coming from the sun itself leading the fictional characters to mark their attempt with a sad face.
He noted that the sun is far larger and more powerful than any human built reactor so it naturally produces more of these hypothetical particles but reactors can still be useful if they rely on different processes from those in stellar interiors.
The television episodes do not mention axions explicitly and the equations appear only as visual references yet they served as an in joke for physicists familiar with solar axion models and dark matter searches.
"That's why it's fantastic to watch as a scientist," Zupan said. "There are many layers to the jokes."
Research Report:Searching for exotic scalars at fusion reactors
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