Exothermic Detection for SUSY inspired Dark Matter models

Theoretically well motivated models of dark matter such as inelastic dark matter (including the last surviving electroweak WIMP, the pseudo-Dirac Higgsino) and strongly interacting dark matter (Dirac Gluino bound states) possess predictive mechanisms for their relic abundance, However, they are notoriously difficult to detect in direct detection experiments; they simply do not possess enough kinetic energy to impart on to a conventional detector. In this talk, I introduce a new paradigm for dark matter detection to solve this problem: supplying energy from the detector onto dark matter rather than vice-versa. I discuss a few concrete implementations. First, nuclear isomer batteries: long lived nuclear states with trapped energy which can be carried away by dark matter through a scattering event. I discuss recent results from my collaborations with experimentalists at Los Alamos National Laboratory that studied isomeric 180m Tantalum and 178m Hafnium. These studies improve upon existing limits on these dark matter models by orders of magnitude with plenty of room for improvement. I also present a similar class of ideas involving a plethora of energy reservoirs to excite dark matter such as light bulbs, storage rings, accelerator beams or even fusion reactors.