Present and future status of light dark matter models from cosmic-ray electron upscattering

Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Newstead, Jayden L.; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Arellano, Natalia Tapia

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.09749

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…However, if the halo DM interacts with our detector, some small fraction of it can also be accelerated. In particular, DM particles can be accelerated by scattering off cosmic rays in the galaxy [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] or in blazars [37], or through their scattering in the Sun [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. The latter is the mechanism that probes the lowest interaction strengths and is the focus of this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar reflection of dark matter with dark-photon mediators

Emken,

Essig,

2024

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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We consider the scattering of low-mass halo dark-matter particles in the hot plasma of the Sun, focusing on dark matter that interact with ordinary matter through a dark-photon mediator. The resulting “solar-reflected” dark matter (SRDM) component contains high-velocity particles, which significantly extend the sensitivity of terrestrial direct-detection experiments to sub-MeV dark-matter masses. We use a detailed Monte Carlo simulation to model the propagation and scattering of dark-matter particles in the Sun, including thermal effects, with special emphasis on ultralight dark-photon mediators. We study the properties of the SRDM flux, obtain exclusion limits from various direct-detection experiments, and provide projections for future experiments, focusing especially on those with silicon and xenon targets. We find that proposed future experiments with xenon and silicon targets can probe the entire “freeze-in benchmark”, in which dark matter is coupled to an ultralight dark photon, including dark-matter masses as low as 𝒪(keV). Our simulations and SRDM fluxes are publicly available.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar reflection of dark matter with dark-photon mediators

Emken,

Essig,

2024

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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“…To overcome this difficulty, various classes of boosted dark matter (BDM) have been proposed in literature. 1 Among them, two component DM models with a hierarchical mass spectrum [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], charged cosmic-ray boosted DM (CRBDM) [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54], and cosmic-ray neutrino BDM (νBDM) [55][56][57][58][59] have received special attention in recent times. Moreover, numerous phenomenological studies of BDM motivated several neutrino and DM experiments to study and report dedicated search results of BDM [60][61][62][63][64].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on cosmic-ray boosted dark matter with realistic cross section

Guha,

Park

2024

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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Sub-MeV cold dark-matter particles are unable to produce electronic recoil in conventional dark-matter direct detection experiments such as XENONnT and LUX-ZEPLIN above the detector threshold. The mechanism of boosted dark matter comes into picture to constrain the parameter space of such low mass dark matter from direct detection experiments. We consider the effect of the leading components of cosmic rays to boost the cold dark matter, which results in significant improvements on the exclusion limits compared to the existing ones. To present concrete study results, we choose to work on models consisting of a dark-matter particle χ with an additional U(1)' gauge symmetry including the secluded dark photon, U(1)B-L, and U(1)L e-L μ . We find that the energy dependence of the scattering cross section plays a crucial role in improving the constraints. In addition, we systematically estimate the Earth shielding effect on boosted dark matter in losing energy while traveling to the underground detector through the Earth.

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“…As a point of comparison, let us first consider uncharged DM (with a phase space density f 0 ), which undergoes convective (i.e. ballistic) transport df0 dt = ∂ t f 0 + v • ∇f 0 after collisions with cosmic rays (see [51][52][53][54][55]58] for a some recent literature on this topic). Since I ∝ f 0 the intensity also satisfies a convective transport equation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Millicharged Cosmic Rays and Low Recoil Detectors

Harnik,

Plestid,

Pospelov

et al. 2020

Preprint

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We consider the production of a "fast flux" of hypothetical millicharged particles (mCPs) in the interstellar medium (ISM). We consider two possible sources induced by cosmic rays: (a) pp →(meson)→(mCP) which adds to atmospheric production of mCPs, and (b) cosmic-ray upscattering on a millicharged component of dark matter. We notice that the galactic magnetic fields retain mCPs for a long time, leading to an enhancement of the fast flux by many orders of magnitude. In both scenarios, we calculate the expected signal for direct dark matter detection aimed at electron recoil. We observe that in Scenario (a) neutrino detectors (ArgoNeuT and Super-Kamiokande) still provide superior sensitivity compared to dark matter detectors (XENON1T). However, in scenarios with a boosted dark matter component, the dark matter detectors perform better, given the enhancement of the upscattered flux at low velocities. Given the uncertainties, both in the flux generation model and in the actual atomic physics leading to electron recoil, it is still possible that the XENON1T-reported excess may come from a fast mCP flux, which will be decisively tested with future experiments.

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Present and future status of light dark matter models from cosmic-ray electron upscattering

Cited by 3 publications

References 53 publications

Solar reflection of dark matter with dark-photon mediators

Solar reflection of dark matter with dark-photon mediators

Constraints on cosmic-ray boosted dark matter with realistic cross section

Millicharged Cosmic Rays and Low Recoil Detectors

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