Single phonon excitations, with energies in the 1−100meV range, are a powerful probe of light dark matter (DM). Utilizing effective field theory, we derive a framework to compute DM absorption rates into single phonons starting from general DM-electron, proton, and neutron interactions. We apply the framework to a variety of DM models: Yukawa coupled scalars, axionlike particles (ALPs) with derivative interactions, and vector DM coupling via gauge interactions or Standard Model electric and magnetic dipole moments. We find that GaAs or Al2O3 targets can set powerful constraints on a U(1)B−L model, and targets with electronic spin ordering are similarly sensitive to DM coupling to the electron magnetic dipole moment. Lastly, we make the code, \textsf{PhonoDark-abs} (an extension of the existing \textsf{PhonoDark} code which computes general DM-single phonon scattering rates), publicly available.
@article{arxiv.2308.06314,
title = {Effective Field Theory for Dark Matter Absorption on Single Phonons},
author = {Andrea Mitridate and Kris Pardo and Tanner Trickle and Kathryn M. Zurek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.06314},
year = {2025}
}