Joint Theory Seminar
Speaker: Yonit Hochberg (Berkeley)
Title: Superconducting detectors for super light dark matter
Host: Ennio Salvioni
Room: 432
Abstract: I will present a new class of of superconducting detectors which are sensitive to O(meV) electron recoils from dark matter-electron scattering. Such devices could detect dark matter as light as the warm dark matter limit of O(keV). We will compute the rate of dark matter scattering off free electrons in a (superconducting) metal, including the relevant Pauli blocking factors. We will demonstrate that classes of dark matter consistent with terrestrial and cosmological/astrophysical constraints could be detected by such detectors with a moderate size exposure.
