Related papers: Turning off the Lights: How Dark is Dark Matter?
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
Direct detection experiments turn to lose sensitivity of searching for a sub-MeV light dark matter candidate due to the threshold of recoil energy. However, such light dark matter particles can be accelerated by energetic cosmic-rays such…
It is usually assumed that dark matter direct detection is sensitive to a large fraction of the dark matter (DM) velocity distribution. We propose an alternative form of dark matter-nucleus scattering which only probes a narrow range of DM…
Dark matter (DM) particles with mass in the sub-GeV range are an attractive alternative to heavier weakly-interacting massive particles, but direct detection of such light particles is challenging. If however DM-nucleus scattering leads to…
We recently pointed out that power measurements of single quasiparticle devices can be used to detect dark matter. These devices have the lowest known energy thresholds, far surpassing standard direct detection experiments, requiring energy…
We report on recent progress in the search for dark matter particles with masses from 1 MeV to 1 GeV. Several dark matter candidates in this mass range are expected to generate measurable electronic-recoil signals in direct-detection…
Dark matter with MeV scale mass is difficult to detect with standard direct search detectors. However, they can be searched for by considering the up-scattering of kinetic energies by cosmic rays. Because the dark matter density is higher…
The majority of the matter in the universe is still unidentified and under investigation by both direct and indirect means. Many experiments searching for the recoil of dark-matter particles off target nuclei in underground laboratories…
Exotic dark matter together with dark energy or cosmological constant seem to dominate in the Universe. An even higher density of such matter seems to be gravitationally trapped in our Galaxy. The nature of dark matter can be unveiled only,…
The direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter interacting with nucleons is hampered by the low recoil energies induced by scatterings in the detectors. This experimental difficulty is avoided in the scenario of boosted dark matter where a…
We propose a new strategy to directly detect light particle dark matter that has long-ranged interactions with ordinary matter. The approach involves distorting the local flow of dark matter with time-varying fields and measuring these…
Sub-GeV mass dark matter particles whose collisions with nuclei would not deposit sufficient energy to be detected, could instead be revealed through their interaction with electrons. Analyses of data from direct detection experiments…
The scattering of light dark matter off thermal electrons inside the Sun produces a "fast" sub-component of the dark matter flux that may be detectable in underground experiments. We update and extend previous work by analyzing the…
In the past decades, several detector technologies have been developed with the quest to directly detect dark matter interactions and to test one of the most important unsolved questions in modern physics. The sensitivity of these…
Despite strong evidence for the existence of large amounts of dark matter (DM) in our Universe, there is no direct indication of its presence in our own solar system. All estimates of the local DM density rely on extrapolating results on…
We report direct-detection constraints on light dark matter particles interacting with electrons. The results are based on a method that exploits the extremely low levels of leakage current of the DAMIC detector at SNOLAB of…
The identification of the nature of dark matter is one of the most important problems confronting particle physics. Current observational constraints permit the mass of the dark matter to range from $10^{-22}$ eV - $10^{48}$ GeV. Given the…
Dark matter is poorly constrained by direct detection experiments at masses below 1 MeV. This is an important target for the next generation of experiments, and several methods have been proposed to probe this mass range. One class of such…
Detection of electron recoils by dark matter (DM) may reveal the structure of the dark sector. We consider a scenario where a heavier DM particle inelastically scatters off an electron and is converted into a lighter DM particle. A small…
The effects of astrophysical uncertainties on the exclusion limits at dark matter direct detection experiments are investigated for three scenarios: elastic, momentum dependent and inelastically scattering dark matter. We find that varying…