I will present a framework for computing dark matter direct detection rates via phonon and magnon excitations in crystal targets for general dark matter models. It consists of parameterizing dark matter interactions by a nonrelativistic EFT, and computing material responses to the EFT operators. Our work extends previous calculations that focused on simple models such as standard spin-independent interactions, and shows that new direct detection experiments that utilize collective excitations, such as SPICE, will have discovery potential over a broad range of dark matter theories.

Zhengkang Zhang received his B.S. from Zhejiang University in 2012 and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2018. He then held a postdoc position at UC Berkeley. Since March 2020, he has been a postdoc at Caltech. Zhengkang’s research interests span many aspects of particle physics phenomenology beyond the Standard Model. His recent focus has been on dark matter physics, especially new ideas for direct detection, and effective field theory techniques relevant for new physics searches.