Since the beginning of the ERC project, significant progress has been made on three fronts:
1. Theoretical model building and cosmological implications. New models and cosmological dynamics of light dark sectors and light dark matter have been studied. Such models have deep implications to dynamics in the early universe and may explain, as the PI showed, the observed baryon-anti-baryon asymmetry, the dark matter density and the hierarchy between the weak scale (of order 100 times the mass of the proton) and the quantum gravity scale (which lies 16 orders of magnitude above the weak scale). Furthermore, as the PI showed, certain dark matter models may leave imprints in the 21-cm spectrum from the time of Cosmic Dawn. Such signatures may be detected with upcoming experiments.
2. Direct detection of light dark matter through electron recoils. One of the main goals of the ERC project is to devise new methods to search for light, sub-GeV dark matter. In 2011, several new strategies to directly detect dark matter particles with MeV to GeV mass, far below standard direct detection capabilities, were suggested by the PI. Since the beginning of the project, the PI and his colleagues reported on a new breakthrough in devising a CCD-based detector with a single-electron sensitivity, realizing the PI's ideas and allowing for a the search of sub-GeV dark matter (i.e. with masses below that of the proton) . A new collaboration, SENSEI, composed of theorist and experimentalists, has began searching for such dark matter with numerous results already published.
3. Direct detection of light dark matter through nuclear recoils. Light dark matter may interact with protons rather than electrons. Measuring such interactions requires new technologies and the development of ultra-low threshold detectors would be considered a breakthrough in the field. The PI has published a study of a new and novel way to make such a search for light dark matter (and possibly solar neutrinos), via the study of chemical-bond breaking. The theoretical tools and prospective reach were calculated and discussed thoroughly. The PI further wrote a first paper suggesting an experimental setup which employs the measurement of color-centers produced in crystals, allowing for such an ultra-low threshold detector that would realize the idea of detecting light dark matter through bond-breaking interactions.
4. The detection of ultralight dark matter, such as the Axion, require very different, and ultra sensitive devices. The PI co-founded the NASDUCK collaboration which employ NMR and co-magnetometer technologies in order to detect minute anomalous magnetic fields which may be a smoking-gun signature of such particles. Several results have already been published in leading journals, while the hunt for dark matter is still on.
