Related papers: The Migdal Effect in Semiconductors for Dark Matte…
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…
The Migdal effect predicts that a nuclear recoil interaction can be accompanied by atomic ionization, allowing many dark matter direct detection experiments to gain sensitivity to sub-GeV masses. We report the first direct search for the…
Migdal effect is attracting interests because of the potential to enhance the sensitivities of direct dark matter searches to the low mass region. In spite of its great importance, the Migdal effect has not been experimentally observed yet.…
Dark matter (DM) scattering with nuclei in solid-state systems may produce elastic nuclear recoil at high energies and single-phonon excitation at low energies. When the dark matter momentum is comparable to the momentum spread of nuclei…
Direct dark matter detection experiments based on a liquid xenon target are leading the search for dark matter particles with masses above $\sim$ 5 GeV/c$^2$, but have limited sensitivity to lighter masses because of the small momentum…
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…
Neutrino-nucleus scatterings in the detector could induce electron ionization signatures due to the Migdal effect. We derive prospects for a future detection of the Migdal effect via coherent elastic solar neutrino-nucleus scatterings in…
Direct detection experiments are looking for nuclear recoils from scattering of sub-GeV dark matter (DM) in crystals, and have thresholds as low as ~ 10 eV or DM masses of ~ 100 MeV. Future experiments are aiming for even lower thresholds.…
We consider searches for the inelastic scattering of low-mass dark matter at direct detection experiments, using the Migdal effect. We find that there are degeneracies between the dark matter mass and the mass splitting that are difficult…
The XENON1T experiment has recently announced the observation of an excess in electron recoil events at energy range of $1-7$ keV with a $3.5~\sigma$ signal significance over the Standard Model prediction. In this letter we sketch the…
Halo dark matter (DM) particles could lose energy due to the scattering off nuclei within the Earth before reaching the underground detectors of DM direct detection experiments. This Earth shielding effect can result in diurnal modulation…
In recent years, dark matter direct detection experiments have spurred interest in the Migdal effect, where it is employed to extend their sensitivity to lower dark matter masses. Given the lack of observation of the Migdal effect, the…
The Migdal effect in a dark-matter-nucleus scattering extends the direct search experiments to the sub-GeV mass region through electron ionization with sub-keV detection thresholds. In this paper, we derive a rigorous and model-independent…
Optically dense clouds in the interstellar medium composed predominantly of molecular hydrogen, known as molecular clouds, are sensitive to energy injection in the form of photon absorption, cosmic-ray scattering, and dark matter (DM)…
Large composite dark matter states source a scalar binding field that, when coupled to Standard Model nucleons, provides a potential under which nuclei recoil and accelerate to energies capable of ionization, radiation, and thermonuclear…
We systematically apply the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to show that the Migdal effect in a solid crystal is entirely due to non-adiabatic effects, namely the deviation of the wave function from exact factorization of the electronic and…
We show that the rate for dark matter-electron scattering in an arbitrary material is determined by an experimentally measurable quantity, the complex dielectric function, for any dark matter interaction that couples to electron density.…
Nuclear recoil ionization yield constitutes a critical uncertainty source in low-energy detection for dark matter (DM) and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) experiments. We present a novel methodology employing…
Motivated by the current strong constraints on the spin-independent dark matter (DM)-nucleus scattering, we investigate the spin-dependent (SD) interactions of the light Majorana DM with the nucleus mediated by an axial-vector boson. Due to…
Recent measurements of the germanium quenching factor deviate significantly from the predictions of the standard Lindhard model for nuclear recoil energies below a keV. This departure may be explained by the Migdal effect in neutron…