No Arabic abstract
There has been an increasing interest on the concept of Inelastic Dark Matter (iDM) - motivated in part by some recent data. We describe the constraints on iDM from the results of the two phase dark matter detector ZEPLIN-II, which has demonstrated strong background discrimination capabilities (>98%). Using previously published estimates of the ZEPLIN-II residual background, the iDM limits presented here exclude a significantly larger iDM parameter space than the limits derived without background subtraction. Moreover, assuming standard xenon quenching factor (qXe) of 0.19, our ZEPLIN-II limits strongly suggest the exclusion of iDM signal claims at >99% C.L., for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) masses >100 GeV.
It has been suggested that dark matter particles which scatter inelastically from detector target nuclei could explain the apparent incompatibility of the DAMA modulation signal (interpreted as evidence for particle dark matter) with the null results from CDMS-II and XENON10. Among the predictions of inelastically interacting dark matter are a suppression of low-energy events, and a population of nuclear recoil events at higher nuclear recoil equivalent energies. This is in stark contrast to the well-known expectation of a falling exponential spectrum for the case of elastic interactions. We present a new analysis of XENON10 dark matter search data extending to E$_{nr}=75$ keV nuclear recoil equivalent energy. Our results exclude a significant region of previously allowed parameter space in the model of inelastically interacting dark matter. In particular, it is found that dark matter particle masses $m_{chi}gtrsim150$ GeV are disfavored.
We present limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross section for inelastic dark matter derived from the 2008 run of ZEPLIN-III. Cuts, notably on scintillation pulse shape and scintillation-to-ionisation ratio, give a net exposure of 63 kg.days in the range 20-80keV nuclear recoil energy, in which 6 events are observed. Upper limits on signal rate are derived from the maximum empty patch in the data. Under standard halo assumptions a small region of parameter space consistent, at 99% CL, with causing the 1.17 ton.year DAMA modulation signal is allowed at 90% CL: it is in the mass range 45-60 GeV with a minimum CL of 88%, again derived from the maximum patch. This is the tightest constraint on that explanation of the DAMA result yet presented using a xenon target.
The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite has yielded unprecedented measurements of the soft gamma-ray spectrum of our Galaxy. Here we use those measurements to set constraints on dark matter (DM) that decays or annihilates into photons with energies $Eapprox 0.02-2$ MeV. First, we revisit the constraints on particle DM that decays or annihilates to photon pairs. In particular, for decaying DM, we find that previous limits were overstated by roughly an order of magnitude. Our new, conservative analysis finds that the DM lifetime must satisfy $taugtrsim 5times 10^{26},{rm s}times (m_{chi}/rm MeV)^{-1}$ for DM masses $m_{chi}=0.054-3.6$ MeV. For MeV-scale DM that annihilates into photons INTEGRAL sets the strongest constraints to date. Second, we target ultralight primordial black holes (PBHs) through their Hawking radiation. This makes them appear as decaying DM with a photon spectrum peaking at $Eapprox 5.77/(8pi G M_{rm PBH})$, for a PBH of mass $M_{rm PBH}$. We use the INTEGRAL data to demonstrate that, at 95% C.L., PBHs with masses less than $1.2times 10^{17}$ g cannot comprise all of the DM, setting the tightest bound to date on ultralight PBHs.
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are bright radio transients with millisecond duration at cosmological distances. Since compact dark matter/objects (COs) could act as lenses and cause split of this kind of very short duration signals, Mu$rm{tilde{n}}$oz et al. (2016) has proposed a novel method to probe COs with lensing of FRBs. In this Letter, we for the first time apply this method to real data and give constraints of the nature of COs with currently available FRB observations. We emphasize the information from dynamic spectra of FRBs is quite necessary for identifying any lensed signals and find no echoes in the existing data. The null search gives a constraint comparable to that from galactic wide binaries, though the methods of redshift inference from dispersion measure would impact a little. Furthermore, we make an improved forecast basing on the distributions of real data for the ongoing and upcoming telescopes. Finally, we discuss the situation where one or more lensed signals will be detected. In such a case, the parameter space of COs can be pinned down very well since the lens mass can be directly determined through the observed flux ratio and time delay between split images.
The dark photon, an new hypothetical light spin 1 field, constitutes a well-motivated dark matter candidate. It manifests as an oscillating electric field with a fixed direction, which can be observed in magnetometric records. In this letter, we use magnetometer data from the Voyager probes to look for the dark photon in the 10^-24 eV to 10^-19 eV mass range, corresponding to frequencies between 10^-9 Hz and 10^-4 Hz. We also discuss the sensitivity of possible future SQUID magnetometry experiments.