Hannover 2020 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 21: Astrophysics and Ions
MO 21.4: Talk
Friday, March 13, 2020, 15:00–15:15, f142
Direct detection of nuclear scattering of sub-Gev dark matter using molecular excitations — •Jesús Pérez-Ríos1, Harikrishnan Ramani2, Oren Slone3, and Rouven Essig4 — 1Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, D-14195 Berlin, Germany — 2Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA — 3Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA — 4C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University, New York 11794-384, USA
The evidence for the existence of dark matter, which makes up about 85% of the matter density in the Universe, is overwhelming. Efforts to detect galactic dark matter particles in the laboratory are crucial for developing a detailed understanding of the particle nature of dark matter. The past decades have seen tremendous progress in direct-detection searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which have masses above the proton. However, dark matter with masses below the proton is woefully underexplored, despite being theoretically well-motivated. We propose a novel direct detection concept to search for dark matter with masses in the 100 keV to 100 MeV range. Here, dark matter particles scatter off molecules in a gas and exciting a vibrational and rotational state of the molecule. The excited rovibrational mode relaxes rapidly and produces a spectacular signal consisting of multiple infrared photons, which can be observed with ultrasensitive photodetectors