A Proposal to Detect Dark Matter Using Axionic Topological Antiferromagnets

David J. E. Marsh; Kin-Chung Fong; Erik W. Lentz; Libor Šmejkal; Mazhar N. Ali

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.121601

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arXiv · 1807.08810

A Proposal to Detect Dark Matter Using Axionic Topological Antiferromagnets

David J. E. Marsh·Kin-Chung Fong·Erik W. Lentz·Libor Šmejkal·Mazhar N. Ali

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Abstract

Antiferromagnetically doped topological insulators (A-TI) are among the candidates to host dynamical axion fields and axion-polaritons; weakly interacting quasiparticles that are analogous to the dark axion, a long sought after candidate dark matter particle. Here we demonstrate that using the axion quasiparticle antiferromagnetic resonance in A-TI's in conjunction with low-noise methods of detecting THz photons presents a viable route to detect axion dark matter with mass 0.7 to 3.5 meV, a range currently inaccessible to other dark matter detection experiments and proposals. The benefits of this method at high frequency are the tunability of the resonance with applied magnetic field, and the use of A-TI samples with volumes much larger than 1 mm$^3$.

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David J. E. Marsh, Kin-Chung Fong, Erik W. Lentz, Libor Šmejkal, Mazhar N. Ali. 2018-07-19. A Proposal to Detect Dark Matter Using Axionic Topological Antiferromagnets. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.123.121601

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