Alternative Analyses for HAYSTAC

The Haloscope at Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold dark matter (HAYSTAC) is a tunable microwave cavity experiment that searches for dark matter axions of masses above 20 μeV. HAYSTAC serves as a testbed for new technologies and its hallmark feature is the use of a quantum squeezed-state receiver to reduce noise below the standard quantum limit. In this search, axions from the Milky Way’s galactic halo undergo conversion in a strong magnetic field. The axion gives rise to a resonant photon signal that is then resonantly enhanced in the microwave cavity, which HAYSTAC would then be able to detect. In this talk, we discuss potential alternative analyses and multidetector search strategies that can be used to search for signals beyond the standard haloscope search. If an alternative analysis is sensitive to signals such as that from the cosmic axion background, this detection could provide insight to physics beyond the standard model.