Direct Detection of Axion-Like Particles in Bismuth-Based Topological Insulators

Abstract

In recent years a new field emerged in dark matter community and immediately attracted a multitude of theoriests and experimentalists, that of light dark matter direct detection in electronic systems. The phenomenon is similar with nuclear recoil in elastic scattering between dark matter and nucleus but with different kinematics. Due to the small energy gap, the electronic system can probe sub-GeV dark matter rather than nucleus target. In particular the absorption into materials can even detect ultra-light dark matter within mass around meV. In terms of the equivalence between optical conductivity and absorption cross section, axion detection can be computed in Bismuth-based topological insulators. It is found that topological insulator has strong sensitivity on axion and provides a complementary direct detection to superconductor and semiconductors. The novelty of topological insulator is that the thin film could even obtain the same sensitivity as superconductor.

7 pages, 2 figures, matches published version in IJMPA

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• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions
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• Bosonic super-WIMPs as keV-scale dark matter
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• The wavefunction reconstruction effects in calculation of DM-induced electronic transition in semiconductor targets
• Impact of uncertainties in the halo velocity profile on direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter
• Chiral kinetic theory in the presence of dark photon
• Charge transport in chiral solids as a possible tool in search of dark matter signals