Related papers: Dark Matter Absorption via Electronic Excitations
The dark photon is a new gauge boson that naturally arises in many beyond the Standard Model theoretical models, featuring interactions that resemble quantum electrodynamics. Due to this feature, it is often considered the portal between…
Uncovering the nature of dark matter is one of the most important goals of particle physics. Light bosonic particles, such as the dark photon, are well-motivated candidates: they are generally long-lived, weakly-interacting, and naturally…
Detection mechanisms for low mass bosonic dark matter candidates, such the axion or hidden photon, leverage potential interactions with electromagnetic fields, whereby the dark matter (of unknown mass) on rare occasion converts into a…
Even though the sensitivity of direct dark matter search experiments reach the level about $10^{-45}~{\rm cm}^2$, there is no confident signal of dark matter been observed. We point out that, if dark matter is a vector boson, the null…
We propose a new mechanism of absorption of dark matter particles in atoms which resembles the Migdal effect of inelastic dark matter scattering. In this process, atom may be ionized upon absorption of a scalar particle through the…
Generically, the effective coupling between the dark matter and an atom scales with the number of constituents in the atom, resulting in the effective coupling being proportional to the mass of the atom. In this limit, when the momentum…
Dark matter can capture in neutron stars and heat them to observable luminosities. We study relativistic scattering of dark matter on highly degenerate electrons. We develop a Lorentz invariant formalism to calculate the capture probability…
Dark matter with mass below about a GeV is essentially unobservable in conventional direct detection experiments. However, newly proposed technology will allow the detection of single electron events in semiconductor materials with…
We establish new experiments to search for dark matter based on a model of a light scalar field with a dilaton-like coupling to the electromagnetic field, which is strongly motivated by superstring theory. We estimate the power of the…
Dark matter experiments primarily search for the scattering of WIMPs on target nuclei of well shielded underground detectors. The results from liquid scintillator experiments furthermore provide precise probes of very light and very weakly…
The dark matter interpretation for a recent observation of excessive electron recoil events at the XENON1T detector seems challenging because its velocity is not large enough to give rise to recoiling electrons of $\mathcal{O}({\rm keV})$.…
We studied the rate at which stars capture dark matter (DM) particles, considering different assumptions regarding the DM characteristics and in particular investigating how the stellar physics influences the capture rate. Two scenarios…
We revisit the detection of luminous dark matter in direct detection experiments. In this scenario, dark matter scatters endothermically to produce an excited state, which decays to produce a photon. We explore ways in which the electron…
Dark matter may be discovered through its capture in stars and subsequent annihilation. It is usually assumed that dark matter is captured after a single scattering event in the star, however this assumption breaks down for heavy dark…
Although various pieces of indirect evidence about the nature of dark matter have been collected, its direct detection has eluded experimental searches despite extensive effort. If the mass of dark matter is below 1 MeV, it is essentially…
We propose a novel method to determine the mass scale of ambient dark matter, applicable to (at least effectively) two-dimensional direct detection experiments that allow for directionality observables. Due to the motion of the solar system…
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 had been a long standing problem that there is no consistent definition of photon position operator nor photon number density in the context of quantum theory. In this paper we derive the photon detection operator, which defines location…
Emission and absorption of light lie at the heart of light-matter interaction. Although emission and absorption rates are regarded as intrinsic properties of atoms and molecules, various ways to modify these rates have been sought in…
We consider models of light super-weakly interacting cold dark matter, with O(10-100) keV mass, focusing on bosonic candidates such as pseudoscalars and vectors. We analyze the cosmological abundance, the gamma-background created by…