title: Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter.
abstract: We propose and study a new class of superconducting detectors that are sensitive to O(meV) electron recoils from dark matter-electron scattering. Such devices could detect dark matter as light as the warm dark-matter limit, m(X)≳1  keV. We compute the rate of dark-matter scattering off of free electrons in a (superconducting) metal, including the relevant Pauli blocking factors. We demonstrate that classes of dark matter consistent with terrestrial and cosmological or astrophysical constraints could be detected by such detectors with a moderate size exposure.
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Yonit
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hochberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Kathryn M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Zurek