- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Hydrogenated carbon structures as directional sub-GeV dark matter detectors

Tomás Arias1, Antonino Bellinvia2, Gianluca Cavoto2,3,*, Angelo Esposito2,3,†, Francesco Pandolfi3,‡, Guglielmo Papiri1,§, Antonio D. Polosa2,3,∥, and Tyler Wu1

  • *Contact author: gianluca.cavoto@roma1.infn.it
  • †Contact author: angelo.esposito@uniroma1.it
  • ‡Contact author: francesco.pandolfi@roma1.infn.it
  • §Contact author: gp343@cornell.edu
  • ∥Contact author: antonio.polosa@roma1.infn.it
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 114, L011702 – Published 13 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ym4j-8zlp

Abstract

We propose hydrogenated carbon structures as targets with a remarkable sensitivity to dark matter–nucleon interactions, in the mass range between 1 MeV and 100 MeV. The ejection of a proton following the interaction with a dark matter particle is a quasielastic process, with an extremely small energy threshold and a clear experimental signature. The proposed detectors are simple, technologically ready, and inexpensive. Yet, they can be considerably more sensitive than current experiments. They also allow strong directionality to be used toward efficient background rejection.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (79)

  1. C. Amole et al. (PICO Collaboration), Dark matter search results from the PICO-60 C3F8 bubble chamber, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 251301 (2017).
  2. I. Alkhatib et al. (SuperCDMS Collaboration), Light dark matter search with a high-resolution athermal phonon detector operated above ground, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 061801 (2021).
  3. Yue Meng et al. (PandaX-4T Collaboration), Dark matter search results from the PandaX-4T commissioning run, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 261802 (2021).
  4. P. Agnes et al. (DarkSide-50 Collaboration), Search for low-mass dark matter WIMPs with 12 ton-day exposure of DarkSide-50, Phys. Rev. D 107, 063001 (2023).
  5. Prakruth Adari et al. (SENSEI Collaboration), First direct-detection results on sub-GeV dark matter using the SENSEI detector at SNOLAB, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 011804 (2025).
  6. J. Aalbers et al. (LZ Collaboration), Dark matter search results from 4.2 tonne-years of exposure of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 011802 (2025).
  7. G. Angloher et al. (CRESST Collaboration), First observation of single photons in a CRESST detector and new dark matter exclusion limits, Phys. Rev. D 110, 083038 (2024).
  8. E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration), WIMP dark matter search using a 3.1  tonne×year exposure of the XENONnT experiment, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 221003 (2025).
  9. C. Boehm and Pierre Fayet, Scalar dark matter candidates, Nucl. Phys. B683, 219 (2004).
  10. Dan Hooper and Kathryn M. Zurek, A natural supersymmetric model with MeV dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 77, 087302 (2008).
  11. Jonathan L. Feng and Jason Kumar, The WIMPless miracle: Dark-matter particles without weak-scale masses or weak interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 231301 (2008).
  12. Adam Falkowski, Joshua T. Ruderman, and Tomer Volansky, Asymmetric dark matter from leptogenesis, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2011) 106.
  13. Yonit Hochberg, Eric Kuflik, Tomer Volansky, and Jay G. Wacker, Mechanism for thermal relic dark matter of strongly interacting massive particles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 171301 (2014).
  14. Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo and Joshua T. Ruderman, Light dark matter from forbidden channels, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 061301 (2015).
  15. Eric Kuflik, Maxim Perelstein, Nicolas Rey-Le Lorier, and Yu-Dai Tsai, Elastically decoupling dark matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 221302 (2016).
  16. Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo, Cristina Mondino, Joshua T. Ruderman, and Po-Jen Wang, Exponentially light dark matter from coannihilation, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2018) 079.
  17. Rouven Essig, Jeremy Mardon, and Tomer Volansky, Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 85, 076007 (2012).
  18. Chris Kouvaris and Josef Pradler, Probing sub-GeV dark matter with conventional detectors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 031803 (2017).
  19. Wei Chao, Mingjie Jin, and Ying-Quan Peng, Directly detecting sub-MeV dark matter via 3-body inelastic scattering process, Phys. Rev. D 107, 093009 (2023).
  20. M. F. Albakry et al. (SuperCDMS Collaboration), A strategy for low-mass dark matter searches with cryogenic detectors in the SuperCDMS SNOLAB facility, in Snowmass 2021 (2022), arXiv:2203.08463.
  21. I. Colantoni et al., BULLKID: BULky and low-threshold Kinetic Inductance Detectors, J. Low Temp. Phys. 199, 593 (2020).
  22. Belina von Krosigk et al., DELight: A direct search experiment for light dark matter with superfluid helium, SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 016 (2023).
  23. Sinéad M. Griffin, Guy Daniel Hadas, Yonit Hochberg, Katherine Inzani, and Benjamin V. Lehmann, Dark-matter–electron detectors for dark-matter–nucleon interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 141803 (2025).
  24. G. Angloher et al., The CRESST experiment: Towards the next-generation of sub-GeV direct dark matter detection, Commun. Phys. 9, 163 (2026).
  25. T. K. Bui et al. (TESSERACT Collaboration), First limits on light dark matter interactions in a low threshold two-channel athermal phonon detector from the TESSERACT Collaboration, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 161002 (2025).
  26. A. Bento et al., The SWEET project: Probing sugar crystals for direct dark matter searches, arXiv:2510.00068.
  27. E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration), Search for light dark matter interactions enhanced by the Migdal effect or bremsstrahlung in XENON1T, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 241803 (2019).
  28. P. Agnes et al. (DarkSide Collaboration), Search for dark-matter–nucleon interactions via Migdal effect with DarkSide-50, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 101001 (2023).
  29. Di Huang et al. (PandaX Collaboration), Search for dark-matter–nucleon interactions with a dark mediator in PandaX-4T, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 191002 (2023).
  30. Nicole F. Bell, Peter Cox, Matthew J. Dolan, Jayden L. Newstead, and Alexander C. Ritter, Exploring light dark matter with the Migdal effect in hydrogen-doped liquid xenon, Phys. Rev. D 109, L091902 (2024).
  31. F. D. Amaro et al., Secondary scintillation yield from GEM electron avalanches in He−CF4 and He−CF4-isobutane for CYGNO—Directional dark matter search with an optical TPC, Phys. Lett. B 855, 138759 (2024).
  32. M. M. Arora et al. (NEWS-G Collaboration), Search for light dark matter with NEWS-G at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane using a methane target, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 141002 (2025).
  33. W. H. Lippincott et al. (HydroX Collaboration), HydroX, a light dark matter search with hydrogen-doped liquid xenon time projection chambers, Commun. Phys. 8, 244 (2025).
  34. A. Apponi et al. (PTOLEMY Collaboration), Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the PTOLEMY project: A theory update, Phys. Rev. D 106, 053002 (2022).
  35. Francesco Delfino, Carles Ros, Sidney M. Palardonio, Nina M. Carretero, Sebastián Murcia-López, Juan Ramón Morante, Jordi Martorell, Zacharias G. Fthenakis, Mauro Francesco Sgroi, Valentina Tozzini et al., Multi-methodological analysis of hydrogen desorption from graphene, Carbon 227, 119211 (2024).
  36. Andrea Casale, Angelo Esposito, Guido Menichetti, and Valentina Tozzini, The β-decay spectrum of tritiated graphene: Combining nuclear quantum mechanics with density functional theory, Phys. Rev. C 113, 054607 (2026).
  37. G. Cavoto, F. Luchetta, and A. D. Polosa, Sub-GeV dark matter detection with electron recoils in carbon nanotubes, Phys. Lett. B 776, 338 (2018).
  38. Yonit Hochberg, Yonatan Kahn, Mariangela Lisanti, Christopher G. Tully, and Kathryn M. Zurek, Directional detection of dark matter with two-dimensional targets, Phys. Lett. B 772, 239 (2017).
  39. F. Pandolfi, A. Apponi, G. Cavoto, C. Mariani, I. Rago, and A. Ruocco, The dark-PMT: A novel directional light dark matter detector based on vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2156, 012051 (2021).
  40. Riccardo Catena, Timon Emken, Marek Matas, Nicola A. Spaldin, and Einar Urdshals, Direct searches for general dark matter-electron interactions with graphene detectors: Part II. Sensitivity studies, Phys. Rev. Res. 5, 043258 (2023).
  41. Riccardo Catena, Timon Emken, Marek Matas, Nicola A. Spaldin, and Einar Urdshals, Direct searches for general dark matter-electron interactions with graphene detectors: Part I. Electronic structure calculations, Phys. Rev. Res. 5, 043257 (2023).
  42. Anirban Das, Jiho Jang, and Hongki Min, Sub-MeV dark matter detection with bilayer graphene, Phys. Rev. D 110, 043020 (2024).
  43. M. G. Betti et al. (PTOLEMY Collaboration), Neutrino physics with the PTOLEMY project: Active neutrino properties and the light sterile case, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2019) 047.
  44. Mahmoud Mohamed Saad Abdelnabi, Chiara Izzo, Elena Blundo, Maria Grazia Betti, Marco Sbroscia, Giulia Di Bella, Gianluca Cavoto, Antonio Polimeni, Isabel García-Cortés, Isabel Rucandio et al., Deuterium adsorption on free-standing graphene, Nanomaterials 11, 130 (2021).
  45. Maria Grazia Betti, Ernesto Placidi, Chiara Izzo, Elena Blundo, Antonio Polimeni, Marco Sbroscia, José Avila, Pavel Dudin, Kailong Hu, Yoshikazu Ito et al., Gap opening in double-sided highly hydrogenated free-standing graphene, Nano Lett. 22, 2971 (2022).
  46. Sammar Tayyab, Alice Apponi, Maria Grazia Betti, Elena Blundo, Gianluca Cavoto, Riccardo Frisenda, Nuria Jiménez-Arévalo, Carlo Mariani, Francesco Pandolfi, Antonio Polimeni et al., Spectromicroscopy study of induced defects in ion-bombarded highly aligned carbon nanotubes, Nanomater. Nanotechnol. 14, 77 (2023).
  47. Alice Apponi, Orlando Castellano, Daniele Paoloni, Domenica Convertino, Neeraj Mishra, Camilla Coletti, Carlo Mariani, and Alessandro Ruocco, Highly hydrogenated monolayer graphene with wide band gap opening, arXiv:2504.10238.
  48. Alice Apponi et al., Stability of highly hydrogenated monolayer graphene in ultra-high vacuum and in air, Appl. Surf. Sci. 723, 165658 (2026).
  49. Alice Apponi et al., Stability of highly hydrogenated monolayer graphene in ultra-high vacuum and in air, arXiv:2504.11853.
  50. M. Simson, P. Holl, A. R. Müller, A. Niculae, G. Petzoldt, K. Schreckenbach, H. Soltau, L. Strüder, H.-F. Wirth, and O. Zimmer, Detection of low-energy protons using a silicon drift detector, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 581, 772 (2007).
  51. A. Apponi, F. Pandolfi, I. Rago, G. Cavoto, C. Mariani, and A. Ruocco, Absolute efficiency of a two-stage microchannel plate for electrons in the 30–900 eV energy range, Meas. Sci. Technol. 33, 025102 (2022).
  52. Walter Kohn and Lu Jeu Sham, Self-consistent equations including exchange and correlation effects, Phys. Rev. 140, A1133 (1965).
  53. Feliciano Giustino, Materials Modelling Using Density Functional Theory: Properties and Predictions (Oxford University Press, New York, 2014).
  54. Peter Cox, Matthew J. Dolan, and Joshua Wood, New limits on light dark matter–nucleon scattering, Phys. Rev. D 112, 115021 (2025).
  55. Peter Cox, Matthew J. Dolan, and Avirup Ghosh, Irreducible constraints on hadronically interacting sub-GeV dark matter, arXiv:2512.20825.
  56. Simon Knapen, Tongyan Lin, and Kathryn M. Zurek, Light dark matter: Models and constraints, Phys. Rev. D 96, 115021 (2017).
  57. Mukul Kumar and Yoshinori Ando, Chemical vapor deposition of carbon nanotubes: A review on growth mechanism and mass production, J. Nanosci. Nanotechnol. 10, 3739 (2010).
  58. Yabin Chen and Jin Zhang, Chemical vapor deposition growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes with controlled structures for nanodevice applications, Acc. Chem. Res. 47, 2273 (2014).
  59. Til Piffl et al., The RAVE survey: The Galactic escape speed and the mass of the Milky Way, Astron. Astrophys. 562, A91 (2014).
  60. G. Monari, B. Famaey, I. Carrillo, T. Piffl, M. Steinmetz, R. F. G. Wyse, F. Anders, C. Chiappini, and K. Janßen, The escape speed curve of the Galaxy obtained from Gaia DR2 implies a heavy Milky Way, Astron. Astrophys. 616, L9 (2018).
  61. Xiaowei Ou, Anna-Christina Eilers, Lina Necib, and Anna Frebel, The dark matter profile of the Milky Way inferred from its circular velocity curve, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 528, 693 (2024).
  62. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/ym4j-8zlp for details on the DFT calculation and the Monte Carlo simulation.
  63. L. M. Capparelli, G. Cavoto, D. Mazzilli, and A. D. Polosa, Directional dark matter searches with carbon nanotubes, Phys. Dark Universe 9–10, 24 (2015); 11, 79(E) (2016).
  64. G. Cavoto, E. N. M. Cirillo, F. Cocina, J. Ferretti, and A. D. Polosa, WIMP detection and slow ion dynamics in carbon nanotube arrays, Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 349 (2016).
  65. S. Hu, M. Lozada-Hidalgo, F. C. Wang, A. Mishchenko, F. Schedin, R. R. Nair E. W. Hill, D. W. Boukhvalov, M. I. Katsnelson, R. A. W. Dryfe et al., Proton transport through one-atom-thick crystals, Nature (London) 516, 227 (2014).
  66. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, Sheng Zhang, Sheng Hu, Vasyl G. Kravets, Francisco J. Rodriguez, Alexey Berdyugin, Alexander Grigorenko, and Andre K. Geim, Giant photoeffect in proton transport through graphene membranes, Nat. Nanotechnol. 13, 300 (2018).
  67. Eoin Griffin, Lucas Mogg, Guang-Ping Hao, Gopinadhan Kalon, Cihan Bacaksiz, Guillermo Lopez-Polin, T. Y. Zhou, Victor Guarochico, Junhao Cai, Christof Neumann et al., Proton and Li-ion permeation through graphene with eight-atom-ring defects, ACS Nano 14, 7280 (2020).
  68. Zhiyang Zeng, Ruiyang Song, Shengping Zhang, Xiao Han, Zhen Zhu, Xiaobo Chen, and Luda Wang, Biomimetic n-doped graphene membrane for proton exchange membranes, Nano Lett. 21, 4314 (2021).
  69. Oluwasegun J Wahab, E. Daviddi, B. Xin, P. Z. Sun, E. Griffin, A. W. Colburn, D. Barry, M. Yagmurcukardes, F. M. Peeters, A. K. Geim et al., Proton transport through nanoscale corrugations in two-dimensional crystals, Nature (London) 620, 782 (2023).
  70. Jincheng Tong, Yangming Fu, Daniil Domaretskiy, F. Della Pia, Parveen Dagar, Lewis Powell, D. Bahamon, Shiqi Huang, Benhao Xin, R. N. Costa Filho et al., Control of proton transport and hydrogenation in double-gated graphene, Nature (London) 630, 619 (2024).
  71. S. Horiguchi, K. Koyama, and Y. H. Ohtsuki, Auger neutralization of slow protons at solid surfaces, Phys. Status Solidi (b) 87, 757 (1978).
  72. H. Winter, R. Kirsch, J. C. Poizat, and J. Remillieux, Neutralization of fast protons in grazing collisions with a clean Al(111) surface, Phys. Rev. A 43, 1660 (1991).
  73. H. Jouin and F. A. Gutierrez, Velocity dependence of outgoing neutral fractions for H(1  s) and H+ beams impinging on Al(111) at grazing incidence, Phys. Rev. A 84, 014901 (2011).
  74. R. Zimny, Z. L. Mišković, N. N. Nedeljković, and Lj. D. Nedeljković, Interplay of resonant and auger processes in proton neutralization after grazing surface scattering, Surf. Sci. 255, 135 (1991).
  75. Luca Cecchini, Carlo Pepe, Benedetta Corcione, Orlando Castellano, Daniele Paoloni, Federico Malnati, Gianluca Cavoto, Marco Carminati, Carlo Fiorini, Giorgio Pettinari, Ravi Prakash Yadav, Ilaria Rago, Alice Apponi, Andrei Puiu, Carlo Mariani, Mauro Rajteri, Alessandro Ruocco, and Francesco Pandolfi, Quantitative correlation between carbon nanotube tip morphology and field emission properties at cryogenic temperature, Nanoscale 17, 21260 (2025).
  76. Francesca Ripanti, Giulio D’Acunto, Maria Grazia Betti, Carlo Mariani, Carla Bittencourt, and Paolo Postorino, Polarization effects of transversal and longitudinal optical phonons in bundles of multiwall carbon nanotubes, J. Phys. Chem. C 123, 20013 (2019).
  77. H. Wulandari, J. Jochum, W. Rau, and F. von Feilitzsch, Neutron flux underground revisited, Astropart. Phys. 22, 313 (2004).
  78. V. A. Babenko and N. M. Petrov, Determination of low-energy parameters of neutron-proton scattering on the basis of modern experimental data from partial-wave analyses, Phys. At. Nucl. 70, 669 (2007).
  79. D. Y Stewart, P. F. Harrison, B. Morgan, and Yorck Alexander Ramachers, Radiation shielding for underground low-background experiments, AIP Conf. Proc. 870, 568 (2006).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 114, L011702– Published 13 July, 2026
  • Received 6 February 2026
  • Accepted 17 June 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation