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Dark Matter (DM) is an elusive form of matter which has been postulated toexplain astronomical observations through its gravitational effects on starsand galaxies, gravitational lensing of light around these, and through itsimprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This indirect evidenceimplies that DM accounts for as much as 84.5% of all matter in our Universe,yet it has so far evaded all attempts at direct detection, leaving suchconfirmation and the consequent discovery of its nature as one of the biggestchallenges in modern physics. Here we present a novel form of low-mass DM$\chi$ that would have been missed by all experiments so far. While its largeinteraction strength might at first seem unlikely, neither constraints fromparticle physics nor cosmological/astronomical observations are sufficient torule out this type of DM, and it motivates our proposal for direct detection byoptomechanics technology which should soon be within reach, namely, through theprecise position measurement of a levitated mesoscopic particle which will beperturbed by elastic collisions with $\chi$ particles. We show that a recentlyproposed nanoparticle matter-wave interferometer, originally conceived fortests of the quantum superposition principle, is sensitive to these collisions,too.

On the Existence of Low-Mass Dark Matter and its Direct Detection