skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Absorption of light dark matter in semiconductors

Journal Article · · Physical Review D
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics

Semiconductors are by now well-established targets for direct detection of MeV to GeV dark matter via scattering off electrons. We show that semiconductor targets can also detect significantly lighter dark matter via an absorption process. When the dark matter mass is above the band gap of the semiconductor (around an eV), absorption proceeds by excitation of an electron into the conduction band. Below the band gap, multiphonon excitations enable absorption of dark matter in the 0.01 eV to eV mass range. Energetic dark matter particles emitted from the sun can also be probed for masses below an eV. We derive the reach for absorption of a relic kinetically mixed dark photon or pseudoscalar in germanium and silicon, and show that existing direct detection results already probe new parameter space. Finally, with only a moderate exposure, low-threshold semiconductor target experiments can exceed current astrophysical and terrestrial constraints on sub-keV bosonic dark matter.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; PHY-1002399; PHY-1316783
OSTI ID:
1430675
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1341931
Journal Information:
Physical Review D, Vol. 95, Issue 2; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 100 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (67)

Detectability of Light Dark Matter with Superfluid Helium journal September 2016
Expected sensitivity to galactic/solar axions and bosonic super-WIMPs based on the axio-electric effect in liquid xenon dark matter detectors journal April 2013
Dark Matter Results from First 98.7 Days of Data from the PandaX-II Experiment journal September 2016
Detecting ultralight bosonic dark matter via absorption in superconductors journal July 2016
Fully depleted, back-illuminated charge-coupled devices fabricated on high-resistivity silicon journal January 2003
Fine Structure in the Absorption-Edge Spectrum of Si journal September 1958
Intrinsic Optical Absorption in Single-Crystal Germanium and Silicon at 77°K and 300°K journal August 1955
Telescope search for decaying relic axions journal May 2007
Dark Matter Detectors as Dark Photon Helioscopes journal July 2013
Direct detection constraints on dark photon dark matter journal July 2015
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials journal August 2016
WISPy cold dark matter journal June 2012
First axion results from the XENON100 experiment journal September 2014
Cool WISPs for stellar cooling excesses journal May 2016
Solar axion flux from the axion-electron coupling journal December 2013
Laboratory limits on solar axions from an ultralow-background germanium spectrometer journal May 1987
Search for low-mass WIMPs in a 0.6 kg day exposure of the DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB journal October 2016
Semiconductor probes of light dark matter journal November 2012
Physics reach of the XENON1T dark matter experiment. journal April 2016
Axions: Theory, Cosmology, and Experimental Searches book January 2008
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets journal May 2016
Low-mass dark matter search using ionization signals in XENON100 journal November 2016
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter journal April 2012
Two-Phonon Difference Absorption Spectra in Ge Crystals journal July 1978
First Direct Detection Limits on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from XENON10 journal July 2012
Axions and the Cooling of White Dwarf Stars journal July 2008
Vector dark matter from inflationary fluctuations journal May 2016
Solar constraints on hidden photons re-visited journal August 2013
Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter journal January 2016
Revisiting the axion bounds from the Galactic white dwarf luminosity function journal October 2014
Far-Infrared Absorption Due to the Two-Phonon Difference Process in Si journal November 1981
Two-phonon infrared absorption spectra of germanium and silicon calculated from first principles journal January 2004
Fine Structure in the Absorption-Edge Spectrum of Ge journal December 1957
New Results from the Search for Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with the CDMS Low Ionization Threshold Experiment journal February 2016
Observation and applications of single-electron charge signals in the XENON100 experiment journal February 2014
X-Ray Interactions: Photoabsorption, Scattering, Transmission, and Reflection at E = 50-30,000 eV, Z = 1-92 journal July 1993
Infrared Lattice Absorption of Silicon and Germanium journal January 1968
Improved Limits on Scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from Reanalysis of 2013 LUX Data journal April 2016
Bosonic super-WIMPs as keV-scale dark matter journal December 2008
Performance and fundamental processes at low energy in a two-phase liquid xenon dark matter detector
  • Shutt, T.; Dahl, C. E.; Kwong, J.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 579, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2007.04.104
journal August 2007
Search for Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with SuperCDMS journal June 2014
Refractive index of silicon and germanium and its wavelength and temperature derivatives journal July 1980
Search for Light Dark Matter in XENON10 Data journal July 2011
Modulation effects in dark matter-electron scattering experiments journal October 2015
Atomic enhancements in the detection of weakly interacting particles journal February 1986
Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data journal November 2012
Dark light, dark matter, and the misalignment mechanism journal November 2011
Performance and Fundamental Processes at Low Energy in a Two-Phase Liquid Xenon Dark Matter Detector journal November 2007
Detection of a particle shower at the Glashow resonance with IceCube journal March 2021
Search for low-mass WIMPs in a 0.6 kg day exposure of the DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB text January 2016
Two-phonon infrared absorption spectra of germanium and silicon calculated from first principles text January 2004
First Axion Results from the XENON100 Experiment text January 2014
Low-mass dark matter search using ionization signals in XENON100 text January 2016
Dark matter results from 225 live days of XENON100 data text January 2012
First axion results from the XENON100 experiment text January 2014
Observation and applications of single-electron charge signals in the XENON100 experiment text January 2014
A search for light dark matter in XENON10 data text January 2011
A search for light dark matter in XENON10 data text January 2011
WISPy Cold Dark Matter text January 2012
First Direct Detection Limits on sub-GeV Dark Matter from XENON10 text January 2012
Expected Sensitivity to Galactic/Solar Axions and Bosonic Super-WIMPs based on the Axio-electric Effect in Liquid Xenon Dark Matter Detectors text January 2012
Direct Detection Constraints on Dark Photon Dark Matter text January 2014
Vector Dark Matter from Inflationary Fluctuations text January 2015
Improved Limits on Scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from Reanalysis of 2013 LUX data text January 2015
Detecting Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter via Absorption in Superconductors text January 2016
Search for low-mass WIMPs in a 0.6 kg day exposure of the DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB text January 2016
A Telescope Search for Decaying Relic Axions text January 2006

Cited By (24)

Lightish but clumpy: scalar dark matter from inflationary fluctuations journal October 2018
Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils journal September 2019
Vector coherent oscillation dark matter journal October 2019
Searching for a solar relaxion or scalar particle with XENON1T and LUX journal November 2019
Axion and hidden photon dark matter detection with multilayer optical haloscopes journal August 2018
Phenomenology of self-interacting dark matter in a matter-dominated universe journal January 2019
Direct detection of axion-like particles in Bismuth-based topological insulators journal August 2018
Directly Detecting Sub-GeV Dark Matter with Electrons from Nuclear Scattering text January 2018
First Direct-Detection Constraints on eV-Scale Hidden-Photon Dark Matter with DAMIC at SNOLAB text January 2017
Light Dark Matter in Superfluid Helium: Detection with Multi-excitation Production text January 2016
Magnetic Bubble Chambers and Sub-GeV Dark Matter Direct Detection text January 2017
New constraints and discovery potential of sub-GeV dark matter with xenon detectors text January 2017
New Constraints and Prospects for sub-GeV Dark Matter Scattering off Electrons in Xenon text January 2017
The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints text January 2017
Resonant absorption of bosonic dark matter in molecules text January 2017
Light Dark Matter: Models and Constraints text January 2017
Phenomenology of Self-Interacting Dark Matter in a Matter-Dominated Universe text January 2018
SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run text January 2018
First Dark Matter Constraints from a SuperCDMS Single-Charge Sensitive Detector text January 2018
Directional Detection of Light Dark Matter with Polar Materials text January 2018
Diamond Detectors for Direct Detection of Sub-GeV Dark Matter text January 2019
Direct Detection of Strongly Interacting Sub-GeV Dark Matter via Electron Recoils text January 2019
Vector Coherent Oscillation Dark Matter text January 2019
On the relation between Migdal effect and dark matter-electron scattering in isolated atoms and semiconductors text January 2019

Similar Records

Detecting ultralight bosonic dark matter via absorption in superconductors
Journal Article · Mon Jul 18 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Physical Review D · OSTI ID:1430675

Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets
Journal Article · Mon May 09 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online) · OSTI ID:1430675

Detection of light dark matter with optical phonons in polar materials
Journal Article · Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Physics Letters B · OSTI ID:1430675