2020/02/10 by Fedja Kadribasic, N. Mirabolfathi, Kadribasic, Fedja +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Semiconductor Detectors and Materials #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.03525
openalex publication_date 2020/02/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose to use the defect creation energy loss in commonly used high energy physics solid state detectors as a tool to statistically identify dark matter signal from background. We simulate the energy loss in the process of defect creation using density functional theory and molecular dynamics methods and calculate the corresponding expected dark matter spectra. We show that in phonon-mediated solid state detectors, the energy loss due to defect creation convolved with the expected dark matter interaction signal results in a significant change in the expected spectra for common detector materials. With recent progress towards ∼10 eV threshold low-mass dark matter searches, this variation in expected dark matter spectrum can be used as a direct signature of dark matter interactions with atomic nuclei.