Constraints on sub-GeV dark matter boosted by cosmic rays from the CDEX-10 experiment at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory

Abstract

We report new constraints on light dark matter (DM) boosted by blazars using the 205.4 kg day data from the CDEX-10 experiment located at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. Two representative blazars, TXS 0506+56 and BL Lacertae are studied. The results derived from TXS 0506+56 exclude DM-nucleon elastic scattering cross sections from 4.6 × 10 −33 cm 2 to 1 × 10 −26 cm 2 for DM masses between 10 keV and 1 GeV, and the results derived from BL Lacertae exclude DMnucleon elastic scattering cross sections from 2.4 × 10 −34 cm 2 to 1 × 10 −26 cm 2 for the same range of DM masses. The constraints correspond to the best sensitivities among solid-state detector experiments in the sub-MeV mass range.

Detecting neutrino-boosted axion dark matter in the MeV gap

“…The recent idea that DM might be boosted by scattering with high-energy particles is applied in various cases, providing interesting phenomenology and promising detection perspectives, i.e. [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45].…”

Search for exotic neutrino interactions using solar neutrinos in the CDEX-10 experiment

“…The second phase of the CDEX experiment (CDEX-10) [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], with scientific goals of searching for light dark matter (DM), runs a 10-kg p-type point-contact germanium [41] detector array in the China Jinping Under-ground Laboratory (CJPL) with about 2400 m of rock overburden [42]. The detector array consists of three triple-element germanium detector strings encapsulated in the copper vacuum tubes and immersed in Liquid Nitrogen (LN 2 ) for cooling and shielding [35].…”

“…CDEX-10 has been under stable data taking conditions since February 2017, and the analysis threshold achieves 160 eVee (electron equivalent energy). Several physical results about DM are derived, such as constraints on DMnucleus scattering down to m χ ∼ 2 GeV/c 2 using a 102.8 kg day exposure [35], constraints on the solar dark photon effective mixing parameter [37], constraints on sub-GeV DM boosted by cosmic rays [39], and constraints on sub-GeV DM-electron scattering [40], are derived from the total 205.4 kg day exposure.…”

“…The differential event rates in germanium for the electronic/nuclear recoil from the CEνNS in the SM for solar neutrino and several physical benchmarks (see discussion below) are calculated and shown in Fig. 1, where the energy resolution of CDEX-10 was considered, and its standard deviation is 35.8 + 16.6 × (E/keV) 1/2 (eV) [35,36,39,40]. Within the framework, two physical scenarios are investigated: (1) Model-I: Active neutrinos from the Sun and SM particles coupled through U (1) B−L gauge boson; and (2) Model-II: Sterile neutrinos from the Sun and SM particles coupled through dark photon which kinetically mixes with photon.…”

“…It significantly improves the region of interest (ROI, <2 keV) of DM direct detection experiments. The contribution of the enhancement can be classified into two categories: pure contribution and the interference between the extra gauge boson and the SM, while the latter contribution is almost negligible in the CDEX-10 experiment and the currently-running generation of experiments [35,48,49], which are insensitive to the SM interaction of solar neu- (eV) [35,36,39,40]. For the ν−N scattering case, the quenching factor in Ge is calculated by the TRIM package [45].…”