- Accepted Paper
Anisotropic response in bilayer graphene for light dark matter detection
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 4 November, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/87vq-rn6f
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 4 November, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/87vq-rn6f
Novel target materials with anisotropic response will play a key role in detecting low-mass dark matter in upcoming experiments. Bilayer graphene is one such material that has been proposed for the detection of sub-MeV mass dark matter particles via electronic excitations. In this work, we calculate scattering rate via a massive mediator in bilayer graphene. With an exposure as small as ~0.5 mg-year, bilayer graphene can probe new regions of the parameter space. The anisotropic response function of bilayer graphene leads to a sidereal-day modulation in the scattering rate, depending on its orientation with respect to the Galactic dark matter wind. We find significant modulation in the scattering rate for sub-MeV mass dark matter, demonstrating bilayer graphene’’s promise for a future experiment. We hope that our work will motivate the community to investigate bilayer graphene as a novel target material, and that it may lead us to discover the particle nature of dark matter.
If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.