Chiral phonons in metal-organic frameworks as quantum sensors for the direct detection of dark matter

TL;DR

This paper proposes using metal-organic frameworks with chiral phonons as quantum sensors for direct dark matter detection, highlighting their tunability and potential for high sensitivity in identifying dark matter interactions.

Contribution

It introduces MOFs as novel materials for chiral phonon-based dark matter sensors and demonstrates their tunability and effective detection sensitivity.

Findings

MOFs can host chiral phonons with large magnetic moments

Detection sensitivity is robust across different MOF compositions

Prototype setup for direct readout of chiral phonons is feasible

Abstract

We investigate a new quantum sensor for dark matter direct detection with sub-eV sensitivity, focusing on several candidate materials that potentially host chiral phonons with large magnetic moments that can be directly read out with an external magnetometer. We focus on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as possible candidate materials for single chiral phonon detection due to their noncentrosymmetric structure, tunability, and the ability to host these excitations in stable acoustic bands. We identify several promising candidates and compare their projected dark matter detection sensitivity for all possible interactions identified within effective field theory. We establish that the expected sensitivity does not depend heavily on the specific choice of the MOF, enabling us to tailor the final material composition to facilitate the magnetic readout. We then propose a prototype setup able to test the direct readout of a chiral phonon sensor with a surface-integrated magnetometer.