The Cern Resonant Wisp Search Crows

The subject of this work is the design, implementation and first results of the ""CERN Resonant WISP Search"" (CROWS), which probes the existence of Axion Like Particles and Hidden Sector Photons (HSPs) using microwave techniques. By exploiting low loss cavity resonators, multiple layers of electromagnetic shielding and a micro-Hz bandwidth detection scheme, new exclusion limits could be set. For HSPs, sensitivity was improved by a factor of 7 compared to previous laboratory experiments. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Microwave-assisted alkaline hydrolysis of PET can be 20 times faster and at lower temperatures. This work presents a novel industrial microwave applicator at 2.45 GHz with homogeneous distribution to support this reaction, which allows an efficient and continuous operation. In addition, an innovative dielectric and calorimetric measurements setup is presented. Furthermore, the modelling of the reaction kinetics based on the measured dielectric parameters is presented.