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Register a new userNo role for neutrons, muons and solar neutrinos in the DAMA annual modulation results
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Authors
R. Bernabei
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This paper summarizes in a simple and intuitive way why the neutrons, the muons and the solar neutrinos cannot give any significant contribution to the DAMA annual modulation results. A number of these elements have already been presented in individual papers; they are recalled here. Afterwards, few simple considerations are summarized which already demonstrate the incorrectness of the claim reported in PRL 113 (2014) 081302.
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This paper gathers arguments and reasons why muons surviving the Gran Sasso mountain cannot mimic the Dark Matter annual modulation signature exploited by the DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA experiments. A number of these items have already been presented in individual papers. Further arguments have been addressed here in order to present a comprehensive collection and to enable a wider community to correctly approach this point.
We estimate rates of solar neutrino-induced neutrons in a DAMA/LIBRA-like detector setup, and find that the needed contribution to explain the annual modulation would require neutrino-induced neutron cross sections several orders of magnitude larger than current calculations indicate. Although these cross sections have never been measured, it is likely that the solar-neutrino effect on DAMA/LIBRA is negligible.
The DAMA experiment using ultra low background NaI(Tl) crystal scintillators has measured an annual modulation effect in the keV region which satisfies all the peculiarities of an effect induced by Dark Matter particles. In this paper we analyze this annual modulation effect in terms of mirror Dark Matter, an exact duplicate of ordinary matter from parallel hidden sector, which chemical composition is dominated by mirror helium while it can also contain significant fractions of heavier elements as Carbon and Oxygen. Dark mirror atoms are considered to interact with the target nuclei in the detector via Rutherford-like scattering induced by kinetic mixing between mirror and ordinary photons, both being massless. In the present analysis we consider various possible scenarios for the mirror matter chemical composition. For all the scenarios, the relevant ranges for the kinetic mixing parameter have been obtained taking also into account various existing uncertainties in nuclear and particle physics quantities.
The long-standing model-independent annual modulation effect measured by DAMA Collaboration is examined in the context of asymmetric mirror dark matter, assuming that dark atoms interact with target nuclei in the detector via kinetic mixing between mirror and ordinary photons, both being massless. The relevant ranges for the kinetic mixing parameter are obtained taking into account various existing uncertainties in nuclear and particle physics quantities as well as characteristic density and velocity distributions of dark matter in different halo models.
Several of the many proposed Dark Matter candidate particles, already investigated with lower exposure and a higher software energy threshold, are further analyzed including the first DAMA/LIBRA--phase2 data release, with an exposure of 1.13 ton $times$ yr and a lower software energy threshold (1 keV). The cumulative exposure above 2 keV considering also DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA--phase1 results is now 2.46 ton $times$ yr. The analysis permits to constraint the parameters space of the considered candidates restricting their values -- with respect to previous analyses -- thanks to the increase of the exposure and to the lower energy threshold.
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