Neutrino discovery limit of Dark Matter direct detection experiments in the presence of non-standard interactions

Abstract

The detection of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering by the COHERENT collaboration has set on quantitative grounds the existence of an irreducible neutrino background in direct detection searches of Weakly Interacting Massive Dark Matter candidates. This background leads to an ultimate discovery limit for these experiments: a minimum Dark Matter interaction cross section below which events produced by the coherent neutrino scattering will mimic the Dark Matter signal, the so-called neutrino floor. In this work we study the modification of such neutrino floor induced by non-standard neutrino interactions within their presently allowed values by the global analysis of oscillation and COHERENT data. By using the full likelihood information of such global analysis we consistently account for the correlated effects of non-standard neutrino interactions both in the neutrino propagation in matter and in its interaction in the detector. We quantify their impact on the neutrino floor for five future experiments: DARWIN (Xe), ARGO (Ar), Super-CDMS HV (Ge and Si) and CRESST phase III (CaWO 4 ). Quantitatively, we find that non-standard neutrino interactions allowed at the 3σ level can result in an increase of the neutrino floor of up to a factor ∼ 5 with respect to the Standard Model expectations and impact the expected sensitivities of the ARGO, CRESST phase III and DARWIN experiments.

Detecting CNO solar neutrinos in next-generation xenon dark matter experiments

“…While a Generation-3 xenon detector could be used to make the first measurement of this flux, with the current technology and exposure of less than 2 kty, such a measurement would not be able to measure the flux to better than 20% precision. This does not account for non-standard neutrino interactions, which may alter the flux relative to the predictions presented in this paper [31,32], and may be studied with Generation-3 experiments [33].…”

Constraining nuclear physics parameters with current and future COHERENT data

“…Recently, several studies were conducted in trying to analyze and interpret the COHERENT data, in order to examine possible deviations from the SM predictions that may point to new physics [5,6]. These searches address non-standard interactions (NSIs) [7][8][9][10], electromagnetic (EM) properties [11][12][13], sterile neutrinos [14][15][16], novel mediators [17][18][19][20], CP-violation [21,22] and implications to dark matter [23][24][25]. Potential contributions due to neutrino-nucleus scattering at direct dark * dipapou@ific.uv.es † hkosmas@uoi.gr ‡ rankasahu@gmail.com § vkbkota@prl.res.in ¶ mihirhota@nist.edu matter detection detectors have been explored [26][27][28][29], while the CEνNS cross section has been also revisited within [30] and beyond the SM [31][32][33].…”

Probing muonic charged current nonstandard interactions at decay-at-rest facilities in conjunction with T2HK

“…[3,[5][6][7]). Some of the other motivations for NSIs include electroweak leptogenesis [8], neutrino magnetic moment [9,10], neutrino condensate as dark energy [11], and direct detection of dark matter [12]. Typically, in the general effective field theory description, the effective Lagrangian can be of the form of charged current (CC) or neutral current (NC) interaction which can alter production, detection, and propagation of neutrinos and lead to rich phenomenology.…”