Speaker
Description
Multiple-phase xenon-based detectors are among the most promising technologies for sub-GeV dark-matter (DM) detection. Using Density Functional Theory (DFT), we compute DM-induced electronic transitions in xenon for both crystalline and liquid phases within the dark-photon model. This work extends previous DFT-based scattering rate calculations in Xenon by incorporating all-electron reconstructed wavefunctions, which we find lead to an order-of-magnitude enhancement of the predicted rates at large energy depositions compared to pseudo-potential approaches. Furthermore, we go beyond the independent-particle approximation and compute DM-electron scattering rates from a dielectric function obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation. We demonstrate that excitonic screening can suppress high-energy scattering responses in crystalline xenon relative to the single-particle prediction. Our results highlight the importance of core-electron contributions and screening for accurate recoil spectra predictions in xenon targets.
| Main Contribution topic | Direct detection |
|---|---|
| Secondary contribution topic | Theory / Phenomenology |