Semiconductor probes of light dark matter

Dark matter with mass below about a GeV is essentially unobservable in conventional direct detection experiments. However, newly proposed technology will allow the detection of single electron events in semiconductor materials with significantly lowered thresholds. This would allow detection of dark matter as light as an MeV in mass. Compared to other detection technologies, semiconductors allow enhanced sensitivity because of their low ionization energy around an eV. Such detectors would be particularly sensitive to dark matter with electric and magnetic dipole moments, with a reach many orders of magnitude beyond current bounds. Observable dipole moment interactions can be generated by new particles with masses as great as similar to 10(3) TeV, providing a window to scales beyond the reach of current colliders. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.