Chiral phonons as dark matter detectors

Abstract

We propose a method for detecting single chiral phonons that will enable their use as dark-matter detectors. We suggest metal--organic frameworks (MOFs) as detector materials, as their flexibility yields low-energy chiral phonons with measurable magnetic moments, and their anisotropy leads to directional sensitivity, which mitigates background contamination. To demonstrate our proposal, we calculate the phononic structure of the MOF InF${}_3$($4,4^{\prime }$-bipyridine), and show that it has highly chiral acoustic phonons. Detection of such chiral phonons via their magnetic moments would dramatically lower the excitation energy threshold for dark matter detection to the energy of a single phonon. We show that single phonon detection in a MOF would extend detector reach ten or more orders of magnitude below current limits, enabling exploration of a multitude of as-yet-unprobed dark matter candidates.

12 pages, 4 figures

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• Chiral Phonons with Giant Magnetic Moments in a Topological Crystalline Insulator
• Observation of Phonon Angular Momentum
• Searching for High Frequency Gravitational Waves with Phonons
• Weyl Phonons: The connection of topology and chirality
• Absorption of Axion Dark Matter in a Magnetized Medium
• Anomalous phonon magnetic moments
• Chiral symmetry and magnetism in a 3D Kagome lattice: RPt${}_2$B (R = La and Nd) prototype crystals
• D-Wave Phonon Angular Momentum Texture in Altermagnets by Magnon-Phonon Hybridization