Effective field theory treatment of the neutrino background in direct dark matter detection experiments

Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Newstead, Jayden L.; Strigari, Louis E.

doi:10.1103/physrevd.93.075018

Cited by 56 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…In this paper we present for the first time a look at the neutrino floor for a large number of viable DM-nucleus interactions beyond the standard SI and SD, defined by a fully relativistic Lagrangian formalism, for several target nuclei. Recent studies of the neutrino floor have used non-relativistic effective field theory (EFT) DM-nucleus couplings [11][12][13] to show that the degeneracy between neutrino and DM recoil spectra may not be present for less conventional interactions. Ref.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Casting a wide signal net with future direct dark matter detection experiments

Gelmini

Takhistov

Witte

2018

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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As dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments continue to improve their sensitivity they will inevitably encounter an irreducible background arising from coherent neutrino scattering. This so-called "neutrino floor" may significantly reduce the sensitivity of an experiment to DM-nuclei interactions, particularly if the recoil spectrum of the neutrino background is approximately degenerate with the DM signal. This occurs for the conventionally considered spin-independent (SI) or spin-dependent (SD) interactions. In such case, an increase in the experiment's exposure by multiple orders of magnitude may not yield any significant increase in sensitivity. The typically considered SI and SD interactions, however, do not adequately reflect the whole landscape of the well-motivated DM models, which includes other interactions. Since particle DM has not been detected yet in laboratories, it is essential to understand and maximize the detection capabilities for a broad variety of possible models and signatures. In this work we explore the impact of the background arising from various neutrino sources on the discovery potential of a DM signal for a large class of viable DM-nucleus interactions and several potential futuristic experimental settings, with different target elements. For some momentum suppressed cross sections, large DM particle masses and heavier targets, we find that there is no suppression of the discovery limits due to neutrino backgrounds. Further, we explicitly demonstrate that inelastic scattering, which could appear in models with multicomponent dark sectors, would help to lift the signal degeneracy associated with the neutrino floor. This study could assist with mapping out the optimal DM detection strategy for the next generation of experiments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ref. [11] determined that for 11 out of the 14 possible non-relativistic EFT operators considered, the predicted recoil spectra can be cleanly distinguished from the corresponding neutrino-induced recoil spectra with moderate size detectors (exposure of few ton·years), for low mass WIMPs (i.e. with masses 10 GeV).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Casting a wide signal net with future direct dark matter detection experiments

Gelmini

Takhistov

Witte

2018

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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“…The momentumindependent operators O 1 and O 4 are the standard spin-independent and spin-dependent operators, typically dubbed SI and SD, respectively. The O 6 and O 10 operators are chosen as representatives of operators with momentum dependence of O(q 2 /m 2 T ) and O(q/m T ), respectively (grouping of operators in this fashion is standard practice, see [42,[53][54][55] for example). The rate of spin-dependent scattering is highly dependent on the isotopic makeup of the target, since the addition or subtraction of single neutrons can open or close nuclear shells.…”

Section: B Rates For Different Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migdal effect and photon bremsstrahlung in effective field theories of dark matter direct detection and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

et al. 2020

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Dark matter direct detection experiments have limited sensitivity to light dark matter (below a few GeV), due to the challenges of lowering energy thresholds for the detection of nuclear recoil to below O(keV). While impressive progress has been made on this front, light dark matter remains the least constrained region of dark-matter parameter space. It has been shown that both ionization and excitation due to the Migdal effect and coherently-emitted photon bremsstrahlung from the recoiling atom can provide observable channels for light dark matter that would otherwise have been missed owing to the resulting nuclear recoil falling below the detector threshold. In this paper we extend previous work by calculating the Migdal effect and photon bremmstrahlung rates for a general set of interaction types, including those that are momentum-independent or -dependent, spin-independent or -dependent, as well as examining the rates for a variety of target materials, allowing us to place new experimental limits on some of these interaction types. Additionally, we include a calculation of these effects induced by the coherent scattering on nuclei of solar or atmospheric neutrinos. We demonstrate that the Migdal effect dominates over the bremsstrahlung effect for all targets considered for interactions induced by either dark matter or neutrinos. This reduces photon bremsstrahlung to irrelevancy for future direct detection experiments.

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“…As direct DM experiments go on to enlarge in size, they will become sensitive to the socalled neutrino floor [131], i.e., the neutrinos from astrophysical sources, including the Sun, atmosphere, and diffuse supernovae [132][133][134][135][136]. The cross section corresponding to the coherent scattering of neutrinos on nucleons will induce a signal which is similar to the elastic scattering of a WIMP and thus represents an irreducible background [137][138][139][140][141]. Despite possibilities of distinguishing signals from WIMP and neutrino scattering, for example by combining detectors with different target materials, the neutrino floor is usually regarded as the ultimate sensitivity for future Direct Detection experiments such as XENONnT [142], LZ [143] and DARWIN [144].…”

Section: Relic Density Via Freeze-outmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformal vector dark matter and strongly first-order electroweak phase transition

Ayazi

Mohamadnejad

2019

J. High Energ. Phys.

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We study a conformal version of the Standard Model (SM), which apart from SM sector, containing a U D (1) dark sector with a vector dark matter candidate and a scalar field (scalon). In this model the dark sector couples to the SM sector via a Higgs portal. The theory is scaleinvariant in lowest order, therefore the spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance entails the existence of a scalar particle, scalon, with vanishing zeroth-order mass. However, one-loop corrections break scale invariance, so they give mass to the scalon. Because of the scale invariance, our model is subjected to constraints which remove many of the free parameters. We put constraints to the two remaining parameters from the Higgs searches at the LHC, dark matter relic density and dark matter direct detection limits by PandaX-II. The viable mass region for dark matter is about 1-2 TeV. We also obtain the finite temperature one-loop effective potential of the model and demonstrate that finite temperature effects, for the parameter space constrained by dark matter relic density, induce a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition. * syaser.ayazi@semnan.ac.ir † a.mohamadnejad@ut.ac.ir and fermionic loop contributions to the Higgs mass within supersymmetry can also explain the hierarchy problem. However, concerning the null results at the first and second LHC runs [3,4], and other popular theoretical resolutions of the hierarchy problem, such as large extra dimensions, investigating alternative approaches are appealing.As it was mentioned, one approach of addressing the hierarchy problem is the radical assumption that the fundamental theory describing Nature does not have any scale. This idea is well worth considering for its potential to be an sparing solution to the hierarchy problem. The CW mechanism with a Higgs does not work for the electroweak symmetry breaking because the large top mass does not permit radiative breaking of the electroweak symmetry, but, simple extensions of the Higgs sector with additional bosonic degrees of freedom are known to be phenomenologically viable (see, e.g., ). On the other hand, the scale-invariant extension of the Higgs sector, is a generic feature of many DM models with scalar [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], fermionic [39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and vector [46-52] DM candidates.There are plenty astronomical and cosmological evidences that around 27 percent of the Universe is made of DM. According to the dominant paradigm, DM consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that successfully explain the large scale structures in our Universe.However, the nature of DM is not well understood, and its particle properties such as spin, mass and interactions all are unknown. Therefore, it is not surprising that despite many previous models, there are still opportunities for DM model building.In this paper we consider spin one (vector) gauge fields as DM candidates. Without concerning scale invariance, vector DM [53-72] and some of its theoretical and phenomenological aspe...

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Effective field theory treatment of the neutrino background in direct dark matter detection experiments

Cited by 56 publications

References 41 publications

Casting a wide signal net with future direct dark matter detection experiments

Casting a wide signal net with future direct dark matter detection experiments

Migdal effect and photon bremsstrahlung in effective field theories of dark matter direct detection and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

Conformal vector dark matter and strongly first-order electroweak phase transition

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