Detecting Light Dark Matter with Magnons

Abstract

Scattering of light dark matter with sub-eV energy deposition can be detected with collective excitations in condensed matter systems. When dark matter has spin-independent couplings to atoms or ions, it has been shown to efficiently excite phonons. Here we show that, if dark matter couples to the electron spin, magnon excitations in materials with magnetic dipole order offer a promising detection path. We derive general formulae for single magnon excitation rates from dark matter scattering, and demonstrate as a proof of principle the projected reach of a yttrium iron garnet target for several dark matter models with spindependent interactions. This highlights the complementarity of various collective excitations in probing different dark matter interactions.

Modeling that Predicts Elementary Particles and Explains Data about Dark Matter, Early Galaxies, and the Cosmos

“…We use these results to estimate masses for 2T simple bosons. (See discussion related to equations (98) and (99). )…”

“…Here, T ± denotes each of T ±2 and T ±1 .) Based on data from reference [13] regarding the Higgs boson, the rest energies of the T-family bosons would comport with equations (98) and (99).…”

“…A threshold energy might be in or above the range of 208 GeV to 213 GeV. (See equation (99).) A corresponding temperature is about 2 × 10 15 degrees Kelvin.…”

Modeling that predicts elementary particles and explains data about dark matter, early galaxies, and the cosmos

“…(We are uncertain as to the extent that people might want to try to use, in the context of 2(6)G248, detectors based on magnons. See reference [99]. The reference discusses possibilities for detecting light dark matter and not necessarily the types of dark matter that proposed modeling suggests.…”

Impact of uncertainties in the halo velocity profile on direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter

“…These include, but are not limited to electron JHEP07(2020)081 transitions: in atoms and semiconductors [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], superconductors [18][19][20], topological insulators [21,22] and Dirac materials [23][24][25]. Sub-GeV DM can be searched for also via the Migdal effect [26][27][28][29], single phonon [30,31] and magnon [32] excitations in crystals, in superfluid helium [33,34], through dissociation or excitation in molecules [35,36] and also through other methods [37][38][39][40][41][42] proposed recently.…”