Direct Detection of Dark Matter -- APPEC Committee Report

Abstract

This Report provides an extensive review of the experimental programme of direct detection searches of particle dark matter. It focuses mostly on European efforts, both current and planned, but does it within a broader context of a worldwide activity in the field. It aims at identifying the virtues, opportunities and challenges associated with the different experimental approaches and search techniques. It presents scientific and technological synergies, both existing and emerging, with some other areas of particle physics, notably collider and neutrino programmes, and beyond. It addresses the issue of infrastructure in light of the growing needs and challenges of the different experimental searches. Finally, the Report makes a number of recommendations from the perspective of a long-term future of the field. They are introduced, along with some justification, in the opening Overview and Recommendations section and are next summarised at the end of the Report. Overall, we recommend that the direct search for dark matter particle interactions with a detector target should be given top priority in astroparticle physics, and in all particle physics, and beyond, as a positive measurement will provide the most unambiguous confirmation of the particle nature of dark matter in the Universe.

Constraining Light Mediators via Detection of Coherent Elastic Solar Neutrino Nucleus Scattering

“…An excellent representive of new generation Ar-based experiments is Darkside-20k [78], which is planed to deploy 40 ton LAr for the DM and solar neutrino detection. In the far future, there is an idea of ARGO [71], which will increase the mass of Ar to 400 tons.…”

“…Inspired by the latest CEνNS observation, it would be encouraging and important to detect the CEνNS process with solar neutrinos, which is a channel of pure NC detection, and important play ground for the new physics beyond the SM [67][68][69][70]. Moreover, the promising prospect for the CEνNS detection with solar neutrinos lies in the rapid developments [71][72][73] of the direct detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) as the DM candidate, since the nuclear recoil signals from direction detection of WIMPs and the CEνNS detection of solar neutrinos are both located at the region from keV to tens of keV, in which high detection efficiency and extremely low background levels have been obtained in current and future DM direct detection programs.…”

“…Thus far, DM direct detection experiments are entering the phase of the multi-ton scale, such as PandaX-4T [74], XENON-nT [75], and LZ [76] and DARWIN [77] for the Liquid Xenon (Xe) detectors, and DarkSide-20k [78] and ARGO [71] for the Liquid Argon (Ar) detectors. Just recently, the PandaX-4T Collaboration has released the first DM search using data of the commissioning run [79], achieving the currently lowest limit at the DM mass of around 30 GeV.…”

The simplest scoto-seesaw model: WIMP dark matter phenomenology and Higgs vacuum stability

“…XENONnT with 20 ton-yr exposure [20] (blue), DarkSide-20k [21] (magenta), DARWIN [22] (black) and ARGO [23] (brown) proposals. The dot-dashed orange line corresponds to the "neutrino floor" coming from coherent elastic neutrino scattering [24].…”

“…XENONnT [20], DarkSide-20k [21], DARWIN [22] and ARGO [23] experiments. The lower limit corresponding to the "neutrino floor" from coherent elastic neutrino scattering is also indicated.…”