We present the case for a dark matter detector with directional sensitivity. This document was developed at the 2009 CYGNUS workshop on directional dark matter detection, and contains contributions from theorists and experimental groups in the field. We describe the need for a dark matter detector with directional sensitivity; each directional dark matter experiment presents their project's status; and we close with a feasibility study for scaling up to a one ton directional detector, which would cost around $150M.

Two types of high-energy events have been detected from thunderstorms. One is "terrestrial gamma-ray flashes" (TGFs), sub-millisecond emissions coinciding with lightning discharges. The other is minute-lasting "gamma-ray glows". Although both phenomena are thought to originate from relativistic runaway electron avalanches in strong electric fields, the connection between them is not well understood. Here we report unequivocal simultaneous detection of a gamma-ray glow termination and a downward TGF, observed from the ground. During a winter thunderstorm in Japan on 9 January 2018, our detectors caught a gamma-ray glow, which moved for~100 s with ambient wind, and then abruptly ceased with a lightning discharge. Simultaneously, the detectors observed photonuclear reactions triggered by a downward TGF, whose radio pulse was located within~1 km from where the glow ceased. It is suggested that the highly-electrified region producing the glow was related to the initiation of the downward TGF.

A direction-sensitive dark matter search experiment at Kamioka underground laboratory with the NEWAGE-0.3a detector was performed. The NEWAGE-0.3a detector is a gaseous micro-time-projection chamber filled with CF 4 gas at 152 Torr. The fiducial volume and target mass are 20 × 25 × 31 cm 3 and 0.0115 kg, respectively. With an exposure of 0.524 kg·days, improved spin-dependent weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-proton cross section limits by a direction-sensitive method were achieved including a new record of 5400 pb for 150 GeV/c 2 WIMPs. We studied the remaining background and found that ambient γ-rays contributed about one-fifth of the remaining background and radioactive contaminants inside the gas chamber contributed the rest.

Photon imaging for MeV gammas has serious difficulties due to huge backgrounds and unclearness in images, which are originated from incompleteness in determining the physical parameters of Compton scattering in detection, e.g., lack of the directional information of the recoil electrons. The recent major mission/instrument in the MeV band, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory/COMPTEL, which was Compton Camera (CC), detected mere ∼ 30 persistent sources. It is in stark contrast with ∼2000 sources in the GeV band. Here we report the performance of an Electron-Tracking Compton Camera (ETCC), and prove that it has a good potential to break through this stagnation in MeV gamma-ray astronomy. The ETCC provides all the parameters of Compton-scattering by measuring 3D recoil electron tracks; then the Scatter Plane Deviation (SPD) lost in CCs is recovered. The energy loss rate (dE/dx), which CCs cannot measure, is also obtained, and is found to be indeed helpful to reduce the background under conditions similar to space. Accordingly the significance in gamma detection is improved severalfold. On the other hand, SPD is essential to determine the point-spread function (PSF) quantitatively. The SPD resolution is improved close to the theoretical limit for multiple scattering of recoil electrons. With such a well-determined PSF, we demonstrate for the first time that it is possible to provide reliable sensitivity in Compton imaging without utilizing an optimization algorithm. As such, this study highlights the fundamental weak-points of CCs. In contrast we demonstrate the possibility of ETCC reaching the sensitivity below 1×10 −12 erg cm −2 s −1 at 1 MeV.

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