Searching for dark absorption with direct detection experiments

Bloch, Itay M.; Essig, Rouven; Tobioka, Kohsaku; Volansky, Tomer; Yu, Tien-Tien

doi:10.1007/jhep06(2017)087

Cited by 170 publications

(195 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…The total rate is given by Eq. (20). Only polar materials, or those which have differently charged ions in the primitive cell, can couple phonon modes to the dark photon, which explains the absence of phonon reach curves for Si and Ge in Fig.…”

Section: A Single Phonon Excitationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Multichannel direct detection of light dark matter: Target comparison

et al. 2020

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Direct detection experiments for light dark matter are making enormous leaps in reaching previously unexplored model space. Several recent proposals rely on collective excitations, where the experimental sensitivity is highly dependent on detailed properties of the target material, well beyond just nucleus mass numbers as in conventional searches. It is thus important to optimize the target choice when considering which experiment to build. We carry out a comparative study of target materials across several detection channels, focusing on electron transitions and single (acoustic or optical) phonon excitations in crystals, as well as the traditional nuclear recoils. We compare materials currently in use in nuclear recoil experiments (Si, Ge, NaI, CsI, CaWO4), a few which have been proposed for light dark matter experiments (GaAs, Al2O3, diamond), as well as 16 other promising polar crystals across all detection channels. We find that target-and dark matter modeldependent reach is largely determined by a small number of material parameters: speed of sound, electronic band gap, mass number, Born effective charge, high frequency dielectric constant, and optical phonon energies. We showcase, for each of the two benchmark models, an exemplary material which has a better reach than in any currently proposed experiment.

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Section: A Single Phonon Excitationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Multichannel direct detection of light dark matter: Target comparison

et al. 2020

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“…We see that SENSEI closes a gap in laboratory probes of the large-ϵ region: the gap was bounded above by a measurement of the Rydberg constant (we show a 2σ constraint adapted from Refs. [57][58][59]) and below by our analysis of terrestrial absorption effects for XENON10, XENON100, CDMSlite, and DAMIC [4,[20][21][22]60] (stellar constraints [61,62] already disfavor this region). FIG.…”

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confidence: 90%

“…Analysis and results.-We calculate the DM recoil spectrum for several models, deriving constraints both on DM-electron scattering and on bosonic DM being absorbed by an electron [20][21][22][23]. For the scattering case, we use the calculations and conventions from [5,13], assuming a local DM density ρ DM ¼ 0.4 GeV=cm 3 [24].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We follow the calculations and conventions in Ref. [21], and present results in the ϵ versus m A 0 parameter space, where ϵ is the parameter that characterizes the strength of the kinetic mixing between the A 0 and the photon. For each model, we calculate conservative 95% confidence level upper limits using Poisson statistics and assuming that all observed electrons in a given bin are DM events.…”

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confidence: 99%

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SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run

et al. 2018

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The Sub-Electron-Noise Skipper CCD Experimental Instrument (SENSEI) uses the recently developed Skipper-CCD technology to search for electron recoils from the interaction of sub-GeV dark matter particles with electrons in silicon. We report first results from a prototype SENSEI detector, which collected 0.019 g day of commissioning data above ground at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. These commissioning data are sufficient to set new direct-detection constraints for dark matter particles with masses between ∼500 keV and 4 MeV. Moreover, since these data were taken on the surface, they disfavor previously allowed strongly interacting dark matter particles with masses between ∼500 keV and a few hundred MeV. We discuss the implications of these data for several dark matter candidates, including one model proposed to explain the anomalously large 21-cm signal observed by the EDGES Collaboration. SENSEI is the first experiment dedicated to the search for electron recoils from dark matter, and these results demonstrate the power of the Skipper-CCD technology for dark matter searches.

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“…Various target materials have been investigated, including noble liquids [1,2], semiconductors [1,[3][4][5], scintillators [6], two-dimensional targets [7], and superconductors [8,9]. These materials are also sensitive to the absorption of ultralight DM (≪ MeV) by electrons [10][11][12][13]. For other direct-detection ideas see [1,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New constraints and prospects for sub-GeV dark matter scattering off electrons in xenon

2017

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We study in detail sub-GeV dark matter scattering off electrons in xenon, including the expected electron recoil spectra and annual modulation spectra. We derive improved constraints using low-energy XENON10 and XENON100 ionization-only data. For XENON10, in addition to including electron-recoil data corresponding to about 1-3 electrons, we include for the first time events corresponding to about 4-7 electrons. Assuming the scattering is momentum independent (F DM ¼ 1), this strengthens a previous crosssection bound by almost an order of magnitude for dark matter masses above 50 MeV. The available XENON100 data corresponds to events with about 4-50 electrons, and leads to a constraint that is comparable to the XENON10 bound above 50 MeV for F DM ¼ 1. We demonstrate that a search for an annual modulation signal in upcoming xenon experiments (XENON1T, XENONnT, LZ) could substantially improve the above bounds even in the presence of large backgrounds. We also emphasize that in simple benchmark models of sub-GeV dark matter, the dark matter-electron scattering rate can be as high as one event every ten (two) seconds in the XENON1T (XENONnT or LZ) experiments, without being in conflict with any other known experimental bounds. While there are several sources of backgrounds that can produce single-or few-electron events, a large event rate can be consistent with a dark matter signal and should not be simply written off as purely a detector curiosity. This fact motivates a detailed analysis of the ionization-data ("S2") data, taking into account the expected annual modulation spectrum of the signal rate, as well as the DM-induced electron-recoil spectra, which are another powerful discriminant between signal and background.

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Searching for dark absorption with direct detection experiments

Cited by 170 publications

References 81 publications

Multichannel direct detection of light dark matter: Target comparison

Multichannel direct detection of light dark matter: Target comparison

SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run

New constraints and prospects for sub-GeV dark matter scattering off electrons in xenon

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