Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets

By R. Essig, M. Fernández-Serra, J. Mardon, Adrián Soto, T. Volansky, T. Yu. 2015

390 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A bstractDark matter in the sub-GeV mass range is a theoretically motivated but largely unexplored paradigm. Such light masses are out of reach for conventional nuclear recoil direct detection experiments, but may be detected through the small ionization signals caused by dark matter-electron scattering. Semiconductors are well-studied and are particularly promising target materials because their O$$ \mathcal{O} $$(1 eV) band gaps allow for ionization signals from dark matter particles as light as a few hundred keV. Current direct detection technologies are being adapted for dark matter-electron scattering. In this paper, we provide the theoretical calculations for dark matter-electron scattering rate in semiconductors, overcoming several complications that stem from the many-body nature of the problem. We use density functional theory to numerically calculate the rates for dark matter-electron scattering in silicon and germanium, and estimate the sensitivity for upcoming experiments such as DAMIC and SuperCDMS. We find that the reach for these upcoming experiments has the potential to be orders of magnitude beyond current direct detection constraints and that sub-GeV dark matter has a sizable modulation signal. We also give the first direct detection limits on sub-GeV dark matter from its scattering off electrons in a semiconductor target (silicon) based on published results from DAMIC. We make available publicly our code, QEdark, with which we calculate our results. Our results can be used by experimental collaborations to calculate their own sensitivities based on their specific setup. The searches we propose will probe vast new regions of unexplored dark matter model and parameter space.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Radiation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e4935e721a882aef664bf0527c54473761b1115

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Citations in the corpus

Refined bounds on MeV-scale thermal dark sectors from BBN and the CMB (2019, background): “Light dark matter particles and their potential mediators with the dark sector have been searched for at particle colliders [40–47], beam dump experiments [48–50], neutrino experiments [51–56], neutrino telescopes [57–59], as well as in direct [60–67] and indirect [68–70] dark matter detection exper”
Directional detection of dark matter with two-dimensional targets (2016, background): “For comparison, we show the expected sensitivity of a germanium target [26] (with silicon performing similarly [27]).”
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, methodology): “For completeness, we show the projected reach using a semi-conductor germanium target as well [22]; silicon performs similarly.”
Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils (2019, background): “ith ionization of target atoms and excitations of electrons in crystals being the primary signal, the computation of event rates requires knowledge of the ionization and crystal form factors found in [5,10,25]. We refer to AppendixBfor more details about the data. The main difference to previous wor”
Light dark matter: Models and constraints (2017, methodology): “As has been noted elsewhere [41,48], and shown explicitly in Fig.”
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