Hunting axion dark matter with anti-ferromagnets: a case study with nickel oxide

Abstract

We show that nickel oxide, which is already a very promising target to look for sub-MeV dark matter scattering, can be employed to hunt axion dark matter, with masses in the meV range and couplings to electrons allowing them to potentially be QCD axions. We describe the interactions between axions and the collective excitations of nickel oxide in terms of a universal effective field theory, built solely out of symmetry arguments. The processes of conversion into one or two excitations provide, respectively, a narrowband and a broadband channel for the axion search, and the possibility of varying an external magnetic field up to a phase transition point allows to cover a large portion of a yet unexplored parameter space, reaching axion masses down to few fractions of an meV. Our results underline nickel oxide as an ideal candidate for a multi-purpose target for light dark matter searches.

arXiv commentDiscussions added, typos fixed

References in corpus (56)

• Results from a search for dark matter in the complete LUX exposure
• New experimental approaches in the search for axion-like particles
• The landscape of QCD axion models
• Light Dark Matter Search with Ionization Signals in XENON1T
• First results from the CRESST-III low-mass dark matter program
• First Dark Matter Constraints from a SuperCDMS Single-Charge Sensitive Detector
• The RAVE survey: the Galactic escape speed and the mass of the Milky Way
• Search for New Physics in Electronic Recoil Data from XENONnT
• Search for "Invisible" Axion Dark Matter in the $3.3\text{-}4.2\mu$eV Mass Range
• A review of the discovery reach of directional Dark Matter detection
• Nonrelativistic effective Lagrangians
• Detection of Light Dark Matter With Optical Phonons in Polar Materials
• Axion and neutrino bounds improved with new calibrations of the tip of the red-giant branch using geometric distance determinations
• Absorption of light dark matter in semiconductors
• Revisiting the axion bounds from the Galactic white dwarf luminosity function
• On the Detectability of Light Dark Matter with Superfluid Helium
• The search for low-mass axion dark matter with ABRACADABRA-10cm
• Detecting Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter via Absorption in Superconductors
• Axion search with a quantum-limited ferromagnetic haloscope
• Searching for galactic axions through magnetized media: the QUAX proposal
• Directional Detection of Light Dark Matter with Polar Materials
• Goldstone and Pseudo-Goldstone Bosons in Nuclear, Particle and Condensed-Matter Physics
• A Proposal to Detect Dark Matter Using Axionic Topological Antiferromagnets
• Light Dark Matter in Superfluid Helium: Detection with Multi-excitation Production
• The escape speed curve of the Galaxy obtained from Gaia DR2 implies a heavy Milky Way
• Multi-Channel Direct Detection of Light Dark Matter: Target Comparison
• Results of Dark Matter Search using the Full PandaX-II Exposure
• Astrophysical Axion Bounds: The 2024 Edition
• Multi-Channel Direct Detection of Light Dark Matter: Theoretical Framework
• A Path to the Direct Detection of sub-GeV Dark Matter Using Calorimetric Readout of a Superfluid ${}^4$He Target
• Detecting Light Dark Matter with Magnons
• Searches for light dark matter using condensed matter systems
• Detectability of Axion Dark Matter with Phonon Polaritons and Magnons
• Spin-Wave Lifetimes Throughout the Brillouin Zone
• A Concept for A Dark Matter Detector Using Liquid Helium-4
• Lifetimes of antiferromagnetic magnons in two and three dimensions: experiment, theory, and numerics
• Detecting Light Boson Dark Matter through Conversion into Magnon
• A new upper limit on the axion-photon coupling with an extended CAST run with a Xe-based Micromegas detector
• Sub-MeV Dark Matter and the Goldstone Modes of Superfluid Helium
• Sub-GeV Dark Matter in Superfluid He-4: an Effective Theory Approach
• Search for Axion dark matter with the QUAX-LNF tunable haloscope
• Axion Dark Matter eXperiment around 3.3 μeV with Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky Discovery Ability
• Dark Matter, Dark Photon and Superfluid He-4 from Effective Field Theory
• Dark Matter Candidates of a Very Low Mass
• Searching for low mass dark matter via phonon creation in superfluid 4He
• Directional detection of light dark matter from three-phonon events in superfluid ${}^4$He
• Optimal anti-ferromagnets for light dark matter detection
• The QCD Axion: Some Like It Hot
• Effective Field Theory for Spontaneously Broken Symmetry
• Physical Signatures of Fermion-Coupled Axion Dark Matter
• Signatures and Detection Prospects for sub-GeV Dark Matter with Superfluid Helium
• Superfluid Effective Field Theory for Dark Matter Direct Detection
• Axion induced spin effective couplings
• The Non-Relativistic Effective Field Theory Of Dark Matter-Electron Interactions
• Axion detection via superfluid ${}^3$He ferromagnetic phase and quantum measurement techniques
• An EFT for anisotropic anti-ferromagnets: gapped Goldstones, pseudo-Goldstones, and phase transitions

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Axions at the meV Crossroads: Theory, Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Experiments