1D Luttinger Modes in Carbon Nanotubes as keV Dark Matter Detector

Abstract

We propose metallic carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a one-dimensional plasmon target for light dark matter (DM) direct detection. Unlike conventional gapless electronic targets, where DM primarily excites electron-hole pairs, the low-energy charge response of a metallic CNT is carried by a collective Luttinger-liquid mode. We compute the projected sensitivity for DM-electron scattering through heavy and light mediators, using benchmark thresholds motivated by quantum-capacitance-detector-like and superconducting-quasiparticle-amplifying-transmon-like readout. For an accumulated nanotube length $L_{\text{CNT}}=10^8{\rm m}$, corresponding to milligram-scale single-wall CNT targets, we find competitive reach in the keV--MeV mass range. In the light-mediator case, the projected sensitivity can probe the cosmologically motivated freeze-in benchmark at keV masses. We also show that the one-dimensional geometry of aligned CNTs induces sidereal-day modulation, providing a handle for distinguishing a DM signal from approximately time-independent sensor backgrounds. These results establish one-dimensional collective modes as a new target class for sub-MeV DM detection. Existing progress in scalable CNT synthesis and superconducting quasiparticle sensing provides a promising experimental foundation, while realizing the proposed detector will require dedicated development of CNT--superconductor coupling and plasmon-to-quasiparticle conversion.