Superconducting Detectors for Super Light Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper proposes superconducting detectors capable of detecting extremely light dark matter particles through electron recoils, potentially reaching the warm dark matter mass limit, and demonstrates their feasibility through rate calculations.

Contribution

Introduction of a new class of superconducting detectors sensitive to meV electron recoils from dark matter-electron interactions, with rate estimates showing potential detectability of light dark matter.

Findings

Detectors can sense dark matter as light as keV mass.

Calculated scattering rates include Pauli blocking effects.

Detection feasible with moderate exposure for certain dark matter models.

Abstract

We propose and study a new class of superconducting detectors which 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, mX > 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/astrophysical constraints could be detected by such detectors with a moderate size exposure.