• Open Access

Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials

Yonit Hochberg, Yonatan Kahn, Mariangela Lisanti, Kathryn M. Zurek, Adolfo G. Grushin, Roni Ilan, Sinéad M. Griffin, Zhen-Fei Liu, Sophie F. Weber, and Jeffrey B. Neaton
Phys. Rev. D 97, 015004 – Published 8 January 2018

Abstract

We propose the use of three-dimensional Dirac materials as targets for direct detection of sub-MeV dark matter. Dirac materials are characterized by a linear dispersion for low-energy electronic excitations, with a small band gap of O(meV) if lattice symmetries are broken. Dark matter at the keV scale carrying kinetic energy as small as a few meV can scatter and excite an electron across the gap. Alternatively, bosonic dark matter as light as a few meV can be absorbed by the electrons in the target. We develop the formalism for dark matter scattering and absorption in Dirac materials and calculate the experimental reach of these target materials. We find that Dirac materials can play a crucial role in detecting dark matter in the keV to MeV mass range that scatters with electrons via a kinetically mixed dark photon, as the dark photon does not develop an in-medium effective mass. The same target materials provide excellent sensitivity to absorption of light bosonic dark matter in the meV to hundreds of meV mass range, superior to all other existing proposals when the dark matter is a kinetically mixed dark photon.

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  • Received 10 September 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.015004

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
  1. Physical Systems
Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsParticles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Yonit Hochberg1,2, Yonatan Kahn3, Mariangela Lisanti3, Kathryn M. Zurek4,5, Adolfo G. Grushin6,7, Roni Ilan8, Sinéad M. Griffin6,9, Zhen-Fei Liu6,9, Sophie F. Weber6,9, and Jeffrey B. Neaton6,9,10,11

  • 1Department of Physics, LEPP, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
  • 2Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
  • 3Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
  • 4Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 5Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 6Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 7Institut Néel, CNRS and Université Grenoble Alpes, F-38042 Grenoble, France
  • 8Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
  • 9Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 10Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 11Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 1 — 1 January 2018

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