A next-generation liquid xenon observatory for dark matter and neutrino physics

Abstract

The nature of dark matter and properties of neutrinos are among the most pressing issues in contemporary particle physics. The dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber is the leading technology to cover the available parameter space for weakly interacting massive particles, while featuring extensive sensitivity to many alternative dark matter candidates. These detectors can also study neutrinos through neutrinoless double-beta decay and through a variety of astrophysical sources. A next-generation xenon-based detector will therefore be a true multi-purpose observatory to significantly advance particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, solar physics, and cosmology. This review article presents the science cases for such a detector.

Reduction of $$^{222}\hbox {Rn}$$-induced backgrounds in a hermetic dual-phase xenon time projection chamber

“…The resulting specific 222 Rn activity depends on the level of hermeticity described by f and is shown in Fig. 6 (solid line on all panels): High leakage flows, representing the case of a classical, non-hermetic TPC, yield a radon activity which is more than three times higher than the DARWIN goal of 0.1 µBq/kg [11][12][13]. In contrast, the low leakage flows of a very well sealed TPC lead to 222 Rn concentrations of less than 0.05 µBq/kg.…”

“…XENONnT recently published a concentration of 1.4 µBq/kg [5]. Future multi ton-scale detectors such as the proposed DARWIN observatory [11] aim for a neutrino-dominated background and thus require 222 Rn concentrations of 0.1 µBq/kg [12,13]. At this level the background from 222 Rn progenies is less than 10% of the one induced by solar pp-neutrinos in the energy region of interest.…”

Dark matter substructures affect dark matter-electron scattering in xenon-based direct detection experiments

“…The DD experiments have been playing a pivotal role in their quest for the DM identity. The typical nuclear recoil (NR) DD experiments, searching for weak-scale DM, have made extraordinary progress [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Typical NR DD experiments lose their sensitivity due to kinematic mismatch for an incident non-relativistic ambient sub-GeV DM (see for instance [22][23][24][25]).…”

Ambient Dose and Dose Rate Measurement in SNOLAB Underground Laboratory at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

“…The background models for ordinary particles and their contributions in direct detection experiments, which search for dark matter particles interacting with ordinary matter in a terrestrial detector target, are extremely important. These background models are used in various ongoing and future dark matter search experiments (see, for example, [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]) and are studied, in detail, for their contributions in the signal search region using extensive Monte Carlo simulations. To reduce background contributions from ordinary particles, typically the direct dark matter search experiments are placed deep in underground laboratories, where contributions from ordinary background sources, such as cosmic rays, are greatly reduced.…”

“…For next-generation ultra-sensitive experiments for the direct detection of dark matter using a multi-ton noble liquids technology, such as DarkSide [ 8 ] and DARWIN [ 4 , 9 ]; the knowledge of the external sources of backgrounds is ultimately important. Typically, the design of the shielding from external sources of backgrounds for such experiments is made based on conservative and independent estimates for the upper limit of environmental gammas assuming uniform distributions.…”