Ultra-Heavy Dark Matter Search with Electron Microscopy of Geological Quartz

Understand

Self-interactions within the dark sector could clump dark matter into heavy composite states with low number density, leading to a highly suppressed event rate in existing direct detection experiments.

• However, the large interaction cross section between such ultra-heavy dark matter (UHDM) and standard model matter results in a distinctive and compelling signature: long, straight damage tracks as they pass through and scatter with matter.
• In this work, we propose using geologically old quartz samples as large-exposure detectors for UHDM.
• We describe a high-resolution readout method based on electron microscopy, characterize the most favorable geological samples for this approach, and study its reach in a simple model of the dark sector.