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Register a new userOn the Existence of Low-Mass Dark Matter and its Direct Detection
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Dark Matter (DM) is an elusive form of matter which has been postulated to explain astronomical observations through its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, gravitational lensing of light around these, and through its imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This indirect evidence implies 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 such confirmation and the consequent discovery of its nature as one of the biggest challenges 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 large interaction strength might at first seem unlikely, neither constraints from particle physics nor cosmological/astronomical observations are sufficient to rule out this type of DM, and it motivates our proposal for direct detection by optomechanics technology which should soon be within reach, namely, through the precise position measurement of a levitated mesoscopic particle which will be perturbed by elastic collisions with $chi$ particles. We show that a recently proposed nanoparticle matter-wave interferometer, originally conceived for tests of the quantum superposition principle, is sensitive to these collisions, too.
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We consider searches for the inelastic scattering of low-mass dark matter at direct detection experiments, using the Migdal effect. We find that there are degeneracies between the dark matter mass and the mass splitting that are difficult to break. Using XENON1T data we set bounds on a previously unexplored region of the inelastic dark matter parameter space. For the case of exothermic scattering, we find that the Migdal effect allows xenon-based detectors to have sensitivity to dark matter with $mathcal{O}$(MeV) mass, far beyond what can be obtained with nuclear recoils.
The LUX experimental group has just announced the most stringent upper limits so far obtained on the cross section of WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering [1]. This result is a factor of two to five below the previous best upper limit [2] and effectively rules out earlier suggestions of low mass WIMP detection signals. The experimental expertise exhibited by this group is extremely impressive, but the fact of continued negative results raises the more basic question of whether or not this is the right approach to solving the dark matter problem. Here I comment upon this question, using as a basis the final chapter of my book on dark matter [3], somewhat revised and extended. I muse on dark matter and its alternative, modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND.
In this article we investigate the benefits of increasing the maximum nuclear recoil energy analysed in dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments. We focus on elastic DM-nucleus interactions, and work within the framework of effective field theory (EFT) to describe the scattering cross section. In agreement with previous literature, we show that an increased maximum energy leads to more stringent upper bounds on the DM-nucleus cross section for the EFT operators, especially those with an explicit momentum dependence. In this article we extend the energy region of interest (ROI) to show that the optimal values of the maximum energy for xenon and argon are of the order of 500 keV and 300 keV, respectively. We then show how, if a signal compatible with DM is observed, an enlarged energy ROI leads to a better measurement of the DM mass and couplings. In particular, for a xenon detector, DM masses of the order of 200 GeV (2 TeV) or lower can be reconstructed for momentum-independent (-dependent) operators. We also investigate three-dimensional parameter reconstruction and apply it to the specific case of scalar DM and anapole DM. We find that opening the energy ROI is an excellent way to identify the linear combination of momentum-dependent and momentum-independent operators, and it is crucial to correctly distinguish these models. Finally, we show how an enlarged energy ROI also allows us to test astrophysical parameters of the DM halo, such as the DM escape speed.
Identifying the true theory of dark matter depends crucially on accurately characterizing interactions of dark matter (DM) with other species. In the context of DM direct detection, we present a study of the prospects for correctly identifying the low-energy effective DM-nucleus scattering operators connected to UV-complete models of DM-quark interactions. We take a census of plausible UV-complete interaction models with different low-energy leading-order DM-nuclear responses. For each model (corresponding to different spin-, momentum-, and velocity-dependent responses), we create a large number of realizations of recoil-energy spectra, and use Bayesian methods to investigate the probability that experiments will be able to select the correct scattering model within a broad set of competing scattering hypotheses. We conclude that agnostic analysis of a strong signal (such as Generation-2 would see if cross sections are just below the current limits) seen on xenon and germanium experiments is likely to correctly identify momentum dependence of the dominant response, ruling out models with either heavy or light mediators, and enabling downselection of allowed models. However, a unique determination of the correct UV completion will critically depend on the availability of measurements from a wider variety of nuclear targets, including iodine or fluorine. We investigate how model-selection prospects depend on the energy window available for the analysis. In addition, we discuss accuracy of the DM particle mass determination under a wide variety of scattering models, and investigate impact of the specific types of particle-physics uncertainties on prospects for model selection.
We examine the effect of nuclear response functions, as laid out in [Fitzpatrick et al, arXiv:1203.3542], on dark matter (DM) direct detection in the context of well-motivated UV completions, including electric and magnetic dipoles, anapole, spin-orbit, and pseudoscalar-mediated DM. Together, these encompass five of the six nuclear responses extracted from the non-relativistic effective theory of [Fitzpatrick et al, arXiv:1203.3542] (with the sixth difficult to UV complete), with two of the six combinations corresponding to standard spin-independent and -dependent responses. For constraints from existing direct detection experiments, we find that only the COUPP constraint, due to its heavy iodine target with large angular momentum and an unpaired spin, and its large energy range sensitivity, is substantially modified by the new responses compared to what would be inferred using the standard form factors to model the energy dependence of the response. For heavy targets such as xenon and germanium, the behavior of the new nuclear responses as recoil energy increases can be substantially different than that of the standard responses, but this has almost no impact on the constraints derived from experiments such as LUX, XENON100 and CDMS since the maximum nuclear recoil energy detected in these experiments is relatively low. We simulate mock data for 80 and 250 GeV DM candidates utilizing the new nuclear responses to highlight how they might affect a putative signal, and find the new responses are most important for momentum-suppressed interactions such as the magnetic dipole or pseudoscalar-mediated interaction when the target is relatively heavy (such as xenon and iodine).
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