Speaker
Description
Recent years have seen a dramatic expansion in ideas regarding the nature of dark matter, extending beyond the weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) paradigm. Many of these theories predict minuscule couplings between light (sub-GeV mass) dark matter and the Standard Model, which direct detection experiments can search for. In this talk we will begin by reviewing the status of current electron-based experiments which are achieving extraordinary sensitivity to the theoretically well-motivated freeze-in dark matter models. We'll then explore how phonons, collective excitations of lattice vibrations, will be essential for searching for lighter dark matter beyond the reach of these electron-based experiments. Lastly, we'll discuss how magnons, collective excitations of spin waves, can broaden our search to dark matter models with primarily spin-dependent interactions.
