Paleo-detectors: Searching for dark matter with ancient minerals

Abstract

We explore paleo-detectors as an approach to the direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter radically different from conventional detectors. Instead of instrumenting a (large) target mass in a laboratory in order to observe WIMP-induced nuclear recoils in real time, the approach is to examine ancient minerals for traces of WIMP-nucleus interactions recorded over timescales as large as 1 Gyr. Here, we discuss the paleo-detector proposal in detail, including background sources and possible target materials. In order to suppress backgrounds induced by radioactive contaminants such as uranium, we propose to use minerals found in marine evaporites or in ultra-basic rocks. We estimate the sensitivity of paleo-detectors to spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleus interactions. The sensitivity to low-mass WIMPs with masses mχ 10 GeV extends to WIMP-nucleon cross sections many orders of magnitude smaller than current upper limits. For heavier WIMPs with masses mχ 30 GeV cross sections a factor of a few to ∼ 100 smaller than current upper limits can be probed by paleo-detectors.

Foraging for dark matter in large volume liquid scintillator neutrino detectors with multiscatter events

“…In this appendix we recast data collected in Ref. [30] in a search for particle tracks in ancient muscovite mica (see [60] for a recent proposal to use other ancient minerals). No tracks were found, resulting in a bound on the flux of such particles, Φ mica 10 −18 cm −2 s −1 sr −1 ,…”

Cosmic-Ray Time Capsules

“…The idea of using nuclear-recoil tracks in ancient rocks as frozen signatures of exotic particles has a long history [2][3][4][5][6]. In particular, neutrino-initiated tracks have been proposed previously as records of past supernovae [7].…”

New Projections for Dark Matter Searches with Paleo-Detectors

“…Paleo-detectors [35][36][37] are a proposed alternative technique to search for interactions of DM with nuclei: instead of operating a nuclear recoil detector in real time, as in a conventional direct detection experiment, one would search for the persistent traces of WIMPnucleon interactions recorded in natural minerals over timescales as long as O(1) Gyr. Many minerals are excellent solid state nuclear track detectors [38][39][40][41] and retain these traces (i.e., damage tracks) caused by a recoiling atomic nucleus for timescales that can exceed the age of the Earth by many orders of magnitude (i.e., 4.5 Gyr).…”

“…For example, HIBM may allow one to read out O(10) mg of material with O(1) nm precision when combined with pulsed-laser and fast-ion-beam ablation techniques [53][54][55][56]. On the other hand, SAXs promises spatial resolutions of O(15) nm in O(100) g of target material [49,50] (see the discussion in References [35,36]). These advanced microscopy techniques enable paleo-detectors to reach much larger exposures with better track length resolutions than previous ideas to probe rare events using natural minerals; see References [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].…”