Plasmon-Enhanced Direct-Detection Method for Boosted Sub-MeV Dark Matter

A plasmon, a collective mode of electronic excitation in solid-state detectors, provides a novel way to detect light dark matter (DM). In this work, we present the conditions of DM to produce a plasmon resonance, requiring relativistic velocities for light DM, and generalize the collective excitation framework to account for relativistic DM. As a demonstration, we consider the cosmic ray boosted DM and find that the plasmon resonance can be significantly enhanced in the scenario with a light mediator. Utilizing the first data from the SENSEI experiment with the skipper CCDs at SNOLAB, we obtain a new strong limit on the sub-MeV DM-electron scattering cross section.