Measuring solar neutrinos over gigayear timescales with paleo detectors

Tapia-Arellano, Natalia; Horiuchi, Shunsaku

doi:10.1103/physrevd.103.123016

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Note that while neutrino-induced nuclear recoils are a background for DM searches, they can also be an interesting signal for paleo-detectors, see Refs. [76][77][78].…”

Section: Backgroundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Neutrino-induced backgrounds are controlled by sources which are not associated with the environment of the paleodetector target sample: the fluxes of solar, supernova, or atmospheric neutrinos. These fluxes may vary by an O(1) factor over the ∼ Gyr integration time of paleo-detectors [76][77][78], hence, we assign a (relative) systematic uncertainty of ±100 % to the neutrino-induced backgrounds. 5 The radiogenic backgrounds, on the other hand, are controlled by the 238 U concentrations which do not change over time.…”

Section: Backgroundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, the Solar System could have traversed some denser region of the DM halo during its past few revolutions around our Galaxy [84]. Time-dependent neutrino signals may also arise from the evolution of our Sun [78], the Galactic supernova rate [76], or the flux of cosmic rays hitting Earth's atmosphere [77]. The code used in this work is available here [86].…”

Section: Sensitivity Forecastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71] and, in particular, the work by Snowden-Ifft et al searching for damage tracks from WIMP-nucleus interactions in ancient phlogopite mica samples [72][73][74][75]. While not the focus of this article, paleo-detectors have also been proposed as a probe of astrophysical neutrino fluxes from Galactic supernovae [76], cosmic ray interactions in Earth's atmosphere [77], and from our Sun [78]. There has been recent related work on using crystal-defects created in certain minerals by WIMP-nucleus interactions to search for light DM [79][80][81] or to monitor nuclear reactors [82], and to use very long damage tracks in ancient quartz samples to search for ultra-heavy DM [83].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, while conventional direct detection experiments measure events in real time, paleo-detectors integrate over timescales up to O(1) Gyr, comparable to the age of the Solar System, t ∼ 4.5 Gyr, and the orbital period of the Solar System around the Milky Way, T ∼ 250 Myr. Using a series of samples with different ages, paleo-detectors offer a unique pathway to gaining information about a signal's time-evolution over Gyr timescales [76][77][78]84].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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New Projections for Dark Matter Searches with Paleo-Detectors

Baum,

Edwards,

Freese

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Paleo-detectors are a proposed experimental technique to search for dark matter (DM). In lieu of the conventional approach of operating a tonne-scale real-time detector to search for DM-induced nuclear recoils, paleo-detectors take advantage of small samples of naturally occurring rocks on Earth that have been deep underground ( 5 km), accumulating nuclear damage tracks from recoiling nuclei for O(1) Gyr. Modern microscopy techniques promise the capability to read out nuclear damage tracks with nanometer resolution in macroscopic samples. Thanks to their O(1) Gyr integration times, paleo-detectors could constitute nuclear recoil detectors with keV recoil energy thresholds and 100 kilotonne-yr exposures. This combination would allow paleo-detectors to probe DM-nucleon cross sections orders of magnitude below existing upper limits from conventional direct detection experiments. In this article, we use improved background modeling and a new spectral analysis technique to update the sensitivity forecast for paleo-detectors. We demonstrate the robustness of the sensitivity forecast to the (lack of) ancillary measurements of the age of the samples and the parameters controlling the backgrounds, systematic mismodeling of the spectral shape of the backgrounds, and the radiopurity of the mineral samples. Specifically, we demonstrate that even if the uranium concentration in paleo-detector samples is 10 −8 (per weight), many orders of magnitude larger than what we expect in the most radiopure samples obtained from ultra basic rock or marine evaporite deposits, paleodetectors could still probe DM-nucleon cross sections below current limits. For DM masses 10 GeV/c 2 , the sensitivity of paleo-detectors could still reach down all the way to the conventional neutrino floor in a Xe-based direct detection experiment.

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“…Note that while neutrino-induced nuclear recoils are a background for DM searches, they can also be an interesting signal for paleo-detectors, see Refs. [76][77][78].…”

Section: Backgroundsmentioning

confidence: 99%