The Physics of the University of Western Australia and the Advanced Center for Dark Material Particle Physics (CDM) built a gravitational wave detector, which recorded two previously observed rare events related, possibly with dark matter. This is reported in the magazine Physical Review Letters.
The basis of the detector is the quartz resonator of bulk acoustic waves (Baw). The basis of this device is a disc from a quartz crystal, which can fluctuate at high frequencies due to acoustic waves passing through it. These waves create an electric charge that can be detected by placing the conductive plates on the outer surfaces of the quartz disk. Baw has been connected to a superconducting quantum interference device, known as SQUID, which acts as an extremely sensitive amplifier for a low voltage signal.
The entire unit was placed inside several radiation screens to protect against parasitic electromagnetic fields and cooled to a low temperature so that low-energy acoustic oscillations of quartz crystal can be recorded.
For the first 153 days of the detector, candidate events indicating high-frequency gravitational waves, which could be created by a primary black hole or a dark matter particles cloud. However, an alternative explanation may be the presence of charged particles, accumulating mechanical stress, meteorite event or an internal atomic process. According to scientists, the development of this technology can potentially provide the first detection of gravitational waves at high frequencies.