New searches for sub-GeV dark matter

Speaker: Yonatan Kahn, Princeton

When: April 27, 2017 (Thu), 04:00PM to 05:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 565

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

The paradigm of weak-scale WIMP dark matter is under pressure from numerous experimental efforts. Zooming out on the possible mass scales, I will discuss two new experimental proposals to search for light (MeV) and ultralight (sub-eV) dark matter. MeV-scale dark matter can eject electrons from a two-dimensional material such as graphene, and the kinematics of these electrons correlate strongly with the dark matter velocity, allowing directional detection. Sub-eV dark matter behaves as a coherent field, and axion-like pseudoscalar dark matter coupling to photons sources small oscillating magnetic fields in the presence of a static external B-field. I will describe progress towards experimental realizations of these proposals with PTOLEMY at Princeton and ABRACADABRA at MIT.