Related papers: Direct Detection of Strongly Interacting Sub-GeV D…
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…
Direct detection strategies are proposed for dark matter particles with MeV to GeV mass. In this largely unexplored mass range, dark matter scattering with electrons can cause single-electron ionization signals, which are detectable with…
Conventional dark matter direct detection experiments set stringent constraints on dark matter by looking for elastic scattering events between dark matter particles and nuclei in underground detectors. However these constraints weaken…
Dark 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…
We study the direct detection prospects for a representative set of simplified models of sub-GeV dark matter (DM), accounting for existing terrestrial, astrophysical and cosmological constraints. We focus on dark matter lighter than an MeV,…
The Sub-Electron-Noise Skipper CCD Experimental Instrument (SENSEI) uses the recently developed Skipper-CCD technology to search for electron recoils from the interaction of sub-GeV dark matter particles with electrons in silicon. We report…
We calculate the scattering rate of sub-GeV dark matter in solid-state targets for spin-dependent dark matter -- nucleon interactions. For dark matter particles with mass below 100 MeV, the scattering occurs predominantly through incoherent…
We describe a novel search for MeV-to-GeV-mass dark matter, in which the dark matter scatters off electrons in a scintillating target. The excitation and subsequent de-excitation of the electron produces one or more photons, which could be…
At a level too faint for astronomy, particle dark matter may interact with Standard Model states via the photon. We derive limits from direct detection experiments on photon-mediated nuclear interactions up to operator dimension-6, viz.,…
Traditional direct searches for dark matter, looking for nuclear recoils in deep underground detectors, are challenged by an almost complete loss of sensitivity for light dark matter particles. Consequently, there is a significant effort in…
Astronomical and cosmological observations indicate that dark matter should interact very weakly with the electromagnetic radiation. Nevertheless, the existence of such interactions is not precluded by observations nor by theoretical…
One of the next frontiers in dark-matter direct-detection experiments is to explore the MeV to GeV mass regime. Such light dark matter does not carry enough kinetic energy to produce an observable nuclear recoil, but it can scatter off…
We present new observational constraints on the elastic scattering of dark matter with electrons for dark matter masses between 10 keV and 1 TeV. We consider scenarios in which the momentum-transfer cross section has a power-law dependence…
Proposed dark matter detectors with eV-scale sensitivities will detect a large background of atomic (nuclear) recoils from coherent photon scattering. This background climbs steeply below $\sim10$~eVnr, far exceeding the declining rate of…
A number of direct detection experiments are searching for electron excitations created by scattering of sub-GeV dark matter. We present an alternate formulation of dark matter-electron scattering in terms of the dielectric response of a…
We study a fermionic dark matter candidate that couples to the standard model particles exclusively through electric and magnetic dipole operators mediated by a massive dark photon. Such dipole portals naturally arise in dark sectors where…
If dark matter has mass lower than around 1 GeV, it will not impart enough energy to cause detectable nuclear recoils in many direct-detection experiments. However, if dark matter is upscattered to high energy by collisions with cosmic…
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…
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…
All attempts to directly detect particle dark matter (DM) scattering on nuclei suffer from the partial or total loss of sensitivity for DM masses in the GeV range or below. We derive novel constraints from the inevitable existence of a…