No Arabic abstract
We have searched for periodic variations of the electronic recoil event rate in the (2-6) keV energy range recorded between February 2011 and March 2012 with the XENON100 detector, adding up to 224.6 live days in total. Following a detailed study to establish the stability of the detector and its background contributions during this run, we performed an un-binned profile likelihood analysis to identify any periodicity up to 500 days. We find a global significance of less than 1 sigma for all periods suggesting no statistically significant modulation in the data. While the local significance for an annual modulation is 2.8 sigma, the analysis of a multiple-scatter control sample and the phase of the modulation disfavor a dark matter interpretation. The DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation interpreted as a dark matter signature with axial-vector coupling of WIMPs to electrons is excluded at 4.8 sigma.
We report on a search for electronic recoil event rate modulation signatures in the XENON100 data accumulated over a period of 4 years, from January 2010 to January 2014. A profile likelihood method, which incorporates the stability of the XENON100 detector and the known electronic recoil background model, is used to quantify the significance of periodicity in the time distribution of events. There is a weak modulation signature at a period of $431^{+16}_{-14}$ days in the low energy region of $(2.0-5.8)$ keV in the single scatter event sample, with a global significance of $1.9,sigma$, however no other more significant modulation is observed. The expected annual modulation of a dark matter signal is not compatible with this result. Single scatter events in the low energy region are thus used to exclude the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation as being due to dark matter electron interactions via axial vector coupling at $5.7,sigma$.
Laboratory experiments searching for galactic dark matter particles scattering off nuclei have so far not been able to establish a discovery. We use data from the XENON100 experiment to search for dark matter interacting with electrons. With no evidence for a signal above the low background of our experiment, we exclude a variety of representative dark matter models that would induce electronic recoils. For axial-vector couplings to electrons, we exclude cross-sections above 6x10^(-35) cm^2 for particle masses of m_chi = 2 GeV/c^2. Independent of the dark matter halo, we exclude leptophilic models as explanation for the long-standing DAMA/LIBRA signal, such as couplings to electrons through axial-vector interactions at a 4.4 sigma confidence level, mirror dark matter at 3.6 sigma, and luminous dark matter at 4.6 sigma.
XENON100 is a liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber built to search for rare collisions of hypothetical, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Operated in a low-background shield at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy, XENON100 has reached the unprecedented background level of $<$0.15 events/day/kevr in the energy range below 100 kevr in 30 kg of target mass, before electronic/nuclear recoil discrimination. It found no evidence for WIMPs during a dark matter run lasting for 100.9 live days in 2010, excluding with 90% confidence scalar WIMP-nucleon cross sections above 7x10$^{-45}$ cm$^{2}$ at a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c$^{2}$. A new run started in March 2011, and more than 200 live days of WIMP-search data have been acquired. Results of this second run are expected to be released in summer 2012.
We report limits on annual modulation of the low-energy event rate from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Such a modulation could be produced by interactions from Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses ~10 GeV/c^2. We find no evidence for annual modulation in the event rate of veto-anticoincident single-detector interactions consistent with nuclear recoils, and constrain the magnitude of any modulation to <0.06 event [keVnr kg day]^-1 in the 5-11.9 keVnr energy range at the 99% confidence level. These results disfavor an explanation for the reported modulation in the 1.2-3.2 keVee energy range in CoGeNT in terms of nuclear recoils resulting from elastic scattering of WIMPs at >98% confidence. For events consistent with electron recoils, no significant modulation is observed for either single- or multiple-detector interactions in the 3.0-7.4 keVee range.
We present results of searches for vector and pseudo-scalar bosonic super-WIMPs, which are dark matter candidates with masses at the keV-scale, with the XENON100 experiment. XENON100 is a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operated at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. A profile likelihood analysis of data with an exposure of 224.6 live days $times$ 34,kg showed no evidence for a signal above the expected background. We thus obtain new and stringent upper limits in the $(8-125)$,keV/c$^2$ mass range, excluding couplings to electrons with coupling constants of $g_{ae} > 3times10^{-13}$ for pseudo-scalar and $alpha/alpha > 2times10^{-28}$ for vector super-WIMPs, respectively. These limits are derived under the assumption that super-WIMPs constitute all of the dark matter in our galaxy.