Speaker: Pier Giuseppe Catinari (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

In this talk, I will explore how effective field theories (EFTs) provide a powerful framework for describing interactions—particularly non-linear couplings—between dark matter particles and the collective excitations of target materials. I will focus specifically on the interaction between axion dark matter and magnons, which are quasiparticles arising from spin-wave excitations in antiferromagnetic materials. Materials such as nickel oxide emerge as optimal candidates for detecting sub-MeV dark matter with spin-dependent interactions, as well as for the absorption of meV-scale QCD axions.