Passive low-energy nuclear recoil detection with color centers

Cogswell, Bernadette; GOEL, A. B.; Huber, Patrick

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.13926

“…Low-energy neutrino and dark matter tracks are initiated dominantly via CEνNS (quasi-elastic charged-current interactions are more applicable for high-energy neutrinos). PALEOCCENE: This concept [154,178] aims to exploit the crystal defects caused by nuclear recoil by using an optical readout scheme based on the imaging of individual color centers. The resulting detectors would be room-temperature, passive devices with recoil thresholds close to the threshold damage energy of the detector material of 100 eV or less.…”

Section: New Detector Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snowmass Neutrino Frontier NF10 Topical Group Report: Netrino Detectors

Klein

¹

,

Machado

²

,

Schmitz

³

et al. 2022

2

0

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Neutrino physics spans an enormous range of energies and scales: from detection of low-energy cosmic neutrinos; to keV-scale recoils in coherent neutrino scattering; to MeV-scale solar, reactor, and neutrinoless double beta decay events; to GeV and TeV-scale detection of neutrinos from accelerators and the atmosphere; to cosmic sources in the PeV-ZeV range. While any particular experiment tends to focus on just one or two detection approaches, the great breadth of neutrino physics means that there is an equally broad spectrum of neutrino detection technologies and methodologies.At any one time, there are a dozen or more medium-to large-scale neutrino detectors operating worldwide, several more in the design or construction phases, and many future detectors planned. Beyond this are a diverse set of smaller scale prototypes distributed across universities and labs.The focus in this report is on new technologies and approaches that will enable future neutrino detectors, and thus experiments that are already built and running, are under construction, or for which technical designs exist are not discussed in great detail. Recommendations for Next-Generation Neutrino DetectorsWhile there are many exciting detectors and enabling technologies described in this report, there are a few ideas that have had a particularly large community interest, and we formulate these into a set of recommendations below: 1 Future Advances in Photon-Based Neutrino Detectors arXiv:2203.07479 2 Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering: Terrestrial and astrophysical applications arXiv:2203.07361 3 Recoil imaging for dark matter, neutrinos, and physics beyond the Standard Model arXiv:2203.05914 4 Low-Energy Physics in Neutrino LArTPCs arXiv:2203.00740 5 SoLAr: Solar Neutrinos in Liquid Argon arXiv:2203.07501 6 Low Background kTon-Scale Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers arXiv:2203.08821 7 Measuring the Neutrino Event Time in Liquid Argon by a Post-Reconstruction One-parameter Fit

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“…However, modern microscopy techniques promise damage track readout resolutions of O(1−10) nm in samples as large as O(0.01 − 100) g. The idea of using such modern microscopy techniques to search for dark matter (DM) or neutrino induced recoil tracks in natural minerals has been dubbed paleo-detectors [24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (see also Refs. [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] for related recent work). For example, hard X-ray microscopy [40][41][42] could allow for the readout of O(100) g of material with track-length resolution of O (10) nm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Galactic geology: Probing time-varying dark matter signals with paleodetectors

Baum

¹

,

DeRocco

²

,

Edwards

³

et al. 2021

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Paleo-detectors are a proposed experimental technique to search for dark matter by reading out the damage tracks caused by nuclear recoils in small samples of natural minerals. Unlike a conventional real-time direct detection experiment, paleo-detectors have been accumulating these tracks for up to a billion years. These long integration times offer a unique possibility: by reading out paleodetectors of different ages, one can explore the time-variation of signals on megayear to gigayear timescales. We investigate two examples of dark matter substructure that could give rise to such time-varying signals. First, a dark disk through which the Earth would pass every ∼45 Myr, and second, a dark matter subhalo that the Earth encountered during the past gigayear. We demonstrate that paleo-detectors are sensitive to these examples under a wide variety of experimental scenarios, even in the presence of substantial background uncertainties. This paper shows that paleo-detectors may hold the key to unraveling our Galactic history.Note: This paper makes use of many mathematical symbols. We collect all symbols and their definitions in Appendix B for the convenience of the reader.

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“…However, modern microscopy techniques promise damage track readout resolutions of O(1−10) nm in samples as large as O(0.01 − 100) g. The idea of using such modern microscopy techniques to search for dark matter (DM) or neutrino induced recoil tracks in natural minerals has been dubbed paleo-detectors [24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (see also Refs. [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] for related recent work). For example, hard X-ray microscopy [40][41][42] could allow for the readout of O(100) g of material with track-length resolution of O (10) nm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Galactic Geology: Probing Time-Varying Dark Matter Signals with Paleo-Detectors

Baum,

DeRocco,

Edwards

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Paleo-detectors are a proposed experimental technique to search for dark matter by reading out the damage tracks caused by nuclear recoils in small samples of natural minerals. Unlike a conventional real-time direct detection experiment, paleo-detectors have been accumulating these tracks for up to a billion years. These long integration times offer a unique possibility: by reading out paleodetectors of different ages, one can explore the time-variation of signals on megayear to gigayear timescales. We investigate two examples of dark matter substructure that could give rise to such time-varying signals. First, a dark disk through which the Earth would pass every ∼45 Myr, and second, a dark matter subhalo that the Earth encountered during the past gigayear. We demonstrate that paleo-detectors are sensitive to these examples under a wide variety of experimental scenarios, even in the presence of substantial background uncertainties. This paper shows that paleo-detectors may hold the key to unraveling our Galactic history.

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Passive low-energy nuclear recoil detection with color centers

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Snowmass Neutrino Frontier NF10 Topical Group Report: Netrino Detectors

Snowmass Neutrino Frontier NF10 Topical Group Report: Netrino Detectors

Galactic geology: Probing time-varying dark matter signals with paleodetectors

Galactic Geology: Probing Time-Varying Dark Matter Signals with Paleo-Detectors

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