First High-Throughput Evaluation of Dark Matter Detector Materials

TL;DR

This study conducts the first high-throughput screening of nearly a thousand materials to identify promising candidates for low-mass dark matter detection, focusing on sensitivity, modulation, and directional detection capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a data-driven approach to evaluate and optimize dark matter detector materials using high-throughput computational methods and properties from the Materials Project database.

Findings

Identified materials with high sensitivity to low-mass dark matter

Computed daily modulation and directional detection prospects for anisotropic materials

Provided a framework for designing next-generation dark matter detectors

Abstract

We perform the first high-throughput search and evaluation of materials that can serve as excellent low-mass dark matter detectors. Using properties of close to one thousand materials from the Materials Project database, we project the sensitivity in dark matter parameter space for experiments constructed from each material, including both absorption and scattering processes between dark matter and electrons. Using the anisotropic materials in the dataset, we further compute the level of daily modulation in interaction rates and the resulting directional sensitivities, highlighting materials with prospects to detect the dark matter wind. Our methods provide the basic tools for the data-driven design of dark matter detectors, and our findings lay the groundwork for the next generation of highly optimized direct searches for dark matter as light as the keV scale.