Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter

Yonit Hochberg, Yue Zhao, Kathryn M. Zurek

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

201 Scopus citations

Abstract

We propose and study a new class of superconducting detectors that are sensitive to O(meV) electron recoils from dark matter-electron scattering. Such devices could detect dark matter as light as the warm dark-matter limit, mX1 keV. We compute the rate of dark-matter scattering off of free electrons in a (superconducting) metal, including the relevant Pauli blocking factors. We demonstrate that classes of dark matter consistent with terrestrial and cosmological or astrophysical constraints could be detected by such detectors with a moderate size exposure.

Original languageEnglish
Article number011301
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume116
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Jan 2016
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Physical Society.

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