https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7071-2
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Graphene-based detectors for directional dark matter detection
Department of Physics, Tamkang University, Tamsui District, New Taipei City, 25137, Taiwan
* e-mail: sywang@mail.tku.edu.tw
Received:
20
February
2019
Accepted:
25
June
2019
Published online:
3
July
2019
Dark matter detectors with directional sensitivity have the capability to distinguish dark matter induced nuclear recoils from isotropic backgrounds, thus providing a smoking gun signature for dark matter in the Galactic halo. Motivated by recent progress in graphene and two-dimensional materials research, we propose a novel class of directional dark matter detectors utilizing graphene-based van der Waals heterostructures. A conceptual design of the detector based on graphene/hexagonal boron nitride and graphene/molybdenum disulfide heterostructures is developed and analyzed. The proposed detector has modular scalability, keV-scale detection threshold, nanometer position resolution, sensitivity down to 10 dark matter mass, and intrinsic head-tail discrimination and background rejection capabilities.
© The Author(s), 2019