Noble Dark Matter Searches at the Low Energy Frontier

It is well-established that there exists a mysterious, non-luminous mass component in our Universe. In 1933, Fritz Zwicky determined that galaxies rotating in the Coma Cluster were moving much faster than expected from the gravitational pull of the visible matter; this was the first piece of evidence to point towards an additional non-visible, mass component in our Universe.

Zwicky measured approximately 10 times more mass than the total mass of the visible matter. Since then, there has been a flurry of astrophysical and cosmological evidence to support this argument, which indicates that the visible matter in our Universe, which is accounted for in our Standard Model of particle physics, only makes up 5% of the total energy density of the Universe.

The evidence suggests that up to 25% of the Universe is comprised of this mysterious, "dark matter", however it is yet to be experimentally detected. The nature of dark matter is therefore one of the biggest mysteries in modern-day particle physics; its discovery is critical in understanding the origin of the universe, as well as unlocking the door to a new era on particle physics.

As such, there is growing excitement within the astroparticle physics community to find dark matter, with many experiments currently searching for direct evidence of a dark matter particle interaction.

So far, there has been no experimental evidence of dark matter. However, experiments are continuing to push the boundaries to rule out a variety of dark matter candidates. One class of dark matter candidates that has yet to be searched for is "light" dark matter, which is predicted to have a smaller mass than most current experiments are typically designed to search for.

As a Future Leader Fellow, I have designed a comprehensive and exciting research programme that will search for this experimentally-unexplored light dark matter, using a combination of both the largest dark matter experiment under construction to date, DarkSide-20k (DS20k), and one of the smallest, QUEST-DMC. These experiments search for evidence of a dark matter particle scattering from a target atom, using liquid noble gases as their target media.

Since DarkSide-20k and QUEST-DMC use different target media, they have the potential to explore different dark matter models and mass ranges, and therefore between the two experiments, there is the very real possibility of a dark matter discovery. The programme will use sophisticated data analysis techniques combined with cutting-edge quantum sensor technology to unlock the potential of both experiments, striving to achieve world-leading sensitivity to a range of light dark matter candidates.

The impact of this programme is significant: if light dark matter is not discovered in this search, a large fraction of light dark matter candidates will have been ruled out, which is knowledgeable and important insight for next-generation dark matter detectors. In addition to the scientific impact, the development of enhanced quantum sensor technology required for this programme will have substantial implications on future detector designs for dark matter and other low-energy physics searches, and serves to benefit the wider community outside of astroparticle physics who require leading-edge quantum sensors.