Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark-Matter–Electron Scattering from the DarkSide-50 Experiment

Agnes, P.; Albuquerque, I. F. M.; Alexander, T.; Alton, A.; Araujo, G. R.; Asner, D. M.; Ave, M.; Back, H. O.; Baldin, B.; Batignani, G.; Biery, K.; Bocci, V.; Bonfini, G.; Bonivento, W.; Bottino, B.; Budano, F.; Bussino, S.; Cadeddu, M.; Cadoni, Mariano; Calaprice, F.; Caminata, A.; Canci, N.; Candela, A.; Caravati, M.; Cariello, M.; Carlini, M.; Carpinelli, M.; Catalanotti, S.; Cataudella, V.; Cavalcante, P.; Cavuoti, S.; Cereseto, R.; Chepurnov, A.; Cicalò, C.; Cifarelli, L.; Cocco, A. G.; Covone, G.; D’Angelo, D.; D’Incecco, M.; D’Urso, D.; Davini, S.; Candia, A. de; Cecco, S. De; Deo, M. De; Filippis, G. De; Rosa, G. De; Vincenzi, M. De; Demontis, Pierfranco; Derbin, A.; Devoto, A.; Eusanio, F. Di; Pietro, G. Di; Dionisi, C.; Downing, M.; Edkins, E.; Empl, A.; Fan, A.; Fiorillo, G.; Fomenko, K.; Franco, D.; Gabriele, F.; Gabrieli, Andrea; Galbiati, C.; Abia, P. García; Ghiano, C.; Giagu, S.; Giganti, C.; Giovanetti, G. K.; Gorchakov, O.E.; Goretti, A.; Granato, F.; Gromov, M.; Guan, Mengyun; Guardincerri, Y.; Gulino, M.; Hackett, B. R.; Hassanshahi, M. H.; Herner, K.; Hosseini, B.; Hughes, Donald J.; Humble, P.; Hungerford, E.; Ianni, A.; Ianni, An.; Ippolito, V.; James, I.; Johnson, T.; Kahn, Yonatan; Keeter, K. J.; Kendziora, C. L.; Kochanek, I.; Koh, G.; Korablëv, D.; Korga, G.; Kubankin, A. S.; Kuss, M.; Commara, M. La; Laí, M.; Li, X; Lisanti, Mariangela; Lissia, M.; Loer, B.; Longo, Giuseppe; Ma, Y.; Machado, A. A.; Machulin, I.; Mandarano, A.; Mapelli, L.; Mari, Stefano Maria; Maricic, J.; Martoff, C. J.; Messina, A.; Meyers, P. D.; Milinčić, R.; Mishra-Sharma, Siddharth; Monte, A.; Morrocchi, M.; Mount, B. J.; Muratova, V.; Musico, P.; Nania, R.; Agasson, A. Navrer; Nozdrina, A.; Oleinik, A.; Orsini, M.; Ortica, F.; Pagani, L.; Pallavicini, M.; Pandola, L.; Pantic, E.; Paoloni, E.; Pazzona, Federico G.; Pelczar, K.; Pelliccia, N.; Pesudo, V.; Picciau, E.; Pocar, A.; Pordes, S.; Poudel, S. S.; Pugachev, D. A.; Qian, Hao; Ragusa, F.; Razeti, M.; Razeto, A.; Reinhold, B.; Renshaw, A.; Rescigno, M.; Riffard, Q.; Romani, A.; Rossi, B.; Rossi, N.; Sablone, D.; Samoylov, O.; Sands, W.; Sanfilippo, Simone; Sant, Marco; Santorelli, R.; Savarese, C.; Scapparone, E.; Schlitzer, B.; Segreto, E.; Semenov, D.; Shchagin, A. V.; Sheshukov, A.; Singh, Prabhjot; Skorokhvatov, M.; Smirnov, O.; Sotnikov, A.; Stanford, C.; Stracka, S.; Suffritti, G.B.; Suvorov, Y.; Tartaglia, R.; Testera, G.; Tonazzo, A.; Trinchese, P.; Unzhakov, E.; Verducci, M.; Vishneva, A.; Vogelaar, B.; Wada, M.; Waldrop, T. J.; Wang, H; Wang, Y; Watson, A.; Westerdale, S.; Wójcik, Marcin; Wojcik, Mariusz; Xiang, X.; Xiao, Xiang; Yang, Changgen; Ye, Z; Zhu, C.; Zichichi, A.; Zuzel, G.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.111303

Cited by 268 publications

(274 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

266

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A measurement of R puts an upper bound onσ e , after assuming a particular form for F DM (q) and integrating Eq. (19). Note that this rate does not include a contribution from electron ionization (as opposed to excitation to a bound state); while including ionization would only increase our rate estimates, the dynamics of free electrons in liquid scintillators and the corresponding scintillation rate estimate are much more involved than our simple treatment here, so to be conservative we neglect this contribution entirely.…”

Section: Rate Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Dark matter-electron scattering from aromatic organic targets

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sub-GeV dark matter (DM) which interacts with electrons can excite electrons occupying molecular orbitals in a scattering event. In particular, aromatic compounds such as benzene or xylene have an electronic excitation energy of a few eV, making them sensitive to DM as light as a few MeV. These compounds are often used as solvents in organic scintillators, where the de-excitation process leads to a photon which propagates until it is absorbed and re-emitted by a dilute fluor. The fluor photoemission is not absorbed by the bulk, but is instead detected by a photon detector such as a photomultiplier tube. We develop the formalism for DM-electron scattering in aromatic organic molecules, calculate the expected rate in p-xylene, and apply this calculation to an existing measurement of the single photo-electron emission rate in a low-background EJ-301 scintillator cell. Despite the fact that this measurement was performed in a shallow underground laboratory under minimal overburden, the DM-electron scattering limits extracted from these data are already approaching leading constraints in the 3-100 MeV DM mass range. We discuss possible next steps in the evolution of this direct detection technique, in which scalable organic scintillators are used in solid or liquid crystal phases and in conjunction with semiconductor photodetectors to improve sensitivity through directional signal information and potentially lower dark rates.

show abstract

Section: Rate Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The task of evaluating Eq. (19) with the molecular orbitals defined in Eq. (14) is simplified by the fact that the benzene ring lies in a plane, allowing the dp z integral in Eq.…”

Section: Molecular Form Factor: Analytic Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dark matter-electron scattering from aromatic organic targets

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Red solid (dashed) line shows the sensitivity projection for the LBECA experiment assuming a 100 kg-year exposure and a single-electron (two-electron) threshold without spurious few-electron backgrounds, but including the background from solar neutrinos scattering coherently off nuclei [20]. Left: Light-gray regions are constrained from direct-detection experiments [4,6,5,7,8,21,9,10,12]. For the example of a hidden-sector dark matter particle, χ coupled to a dark photon, A , with m A = 3m χ , we show a darker gray region that combines constraints from accelerator-based searches (LSND, E137, BaBar) and traditional nuclear recoil searches [22,23,24,25,6].…”

Section: Lbeca Science Goals and Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The traditional direct detection technique-observing nuclear recoils from dark matter scattering elastically off nuclei-rapidly loses sensitivity in existing experiments for dark matter masses below ∼1 GeV. However, a technique with significant potential for improvement is to search for dark matter scattering off electrons [3] using noble liquid detectors, as first demonstrated using data from XENON10 [4,5], XENON100 [6,7] and DarkSide-50 [8] experiments. Solid-state silicon detectors, such as SENSEI [9,10], DAMIC [11], and SuperCDMS [12] have also demonstrated their potential in the region for sub-GeV light dark matter detection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

LBECA: A Low Background Electron Counting Apparatus for Sub-GeV Dark Matter Detection

Bernstein

Clark

Essig

et al. 2020

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two-phase noble liquid detectors, with large target masses and effective background reduction, are currently leading the dark matter direct detection for WIMP masses above a few GeV. Due to their sensitivity to single ionized electron signals, these detectors were shown to also have strong constraints for sub-GeV dark matter via their scattering on electrons. In fact, the most stringent direct detection constraints for sub-GeV dark matter down to as low as 5 MeV come from noble liquid detectors, namely XENON10, DarkSide-50, XENON100 and XENON1T, although these experiments still suffer from high background at single or a few electron level. LBECA is a planned 100-kg scale liquid xenon detector with significant reduction of the single and a few electron background. The experiment will improve the sensitivity to sub-GeV dark matter by three orders of magnitude compared to the current best constraints.

show abstract

“…A heavy dark matter can still softly scatter off of the He-4 detector so to excite a phonon degree of freedom. [64], XENON10, XENON100 [32] and DarkSide-50 [65]. We consider a 95% C.L.…”

Section: Phonon Emissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We consider a model of sub-GeV dark matter whose interaction with the Standard Model is mediated by a new vector boson (the dark photon) which couples kinetically to the photon. We describe the possibility of constraining such a model using a superfluid He-4 detector, by means of an effective theory for the description of the superfluid phonon. We find that such a detector could provide bounds that are competitive with other direct detection experiments only for ultralight vector mediator, in agreement with previous studies. As a byproduct we also present, for the first time, the low-energy effective field theory for the interaction between photons and phonons.

show abstract

Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark-Matter–Electron Scattering from the DarkSide-50 Experiment

Cited by 268 publications

References 47 publications

Dark matter-electron scattering from aromatic organic targets

Dark matter-electron scattering from aromatic organic targets

LBECA: A Low Background Electron Counting Apparatus for Sub-GeV Dark Matter Detection

Dark matter, dark photon and superfluid He-4 from effective field theory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About