This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For decades, physicists have searched for dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe. Although its gravitational influence shapes galaxies and the large-scale structure of the cosmos, dark matter has never been directly detected.
Now, an international team has identified a new class of quantum materials that could dramatically improve the search for some of the lightest and most elusive forms of dark matter. Published in Physical Review Letters, the study introduces three unconventional materials whose unique electronic properties could serve as exceptionally sensitive dark matter detectors, potentially surpassing existing detector designs by several orders of magnitude. The research was conducted by Prof.
Yonit Hochberg and Rotem Ovadia from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Dino Novko from the Institute of Physics in Croatia, and Prof. Antonio Politano of the University of L'Aquila.
The work brings together expertise in particle physics, condensed matter physics and materials science to tackle one of the greatest unanswered questions in modern science. Unlike ordinary matter, dark matter does not emit, absorb or reflect light, making it effectively invisible. Scientists can search for it only by looking for the tiny amounts of energy deposited when dark matter particles interact with ordinary materials.
Detecting light dark matter is particularly challenging because these interactions are extraordinarily weak, requiring materials capable of sensing minuscule energy transfers. The team identified three promising candidates—titanium diselenide (TiSe₂), strontium ruthenate (Sr₂RuO₄) and hole-doped diamond—whose quantum properties naturally amplify these tiny signals. Each material hosts low-energy collective electronic excitations known as plasmons, allowing them to respond much more strongly to the minute energy deposits expected from light dark matter particles than conventional detector materials.
Using advanced first-principles quantum mechanical simulations, the researchers calculated how each material would respond to potential dark matter interactions. Their results show that detectors built from these materials could probe previously inaccessible regions of dark matter parameter space, outperforming today's leading candidate materials across a wide range of particle masses. In particular, detectors based on titanium diselenide could improve sensitivity by as much as two to three orders of magnitude compared with current benchmark materials.
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