Sensitivity of the PICO-500 bubble chamber to supernova neutrinos through coherent nuclear elastic scattering

Abstract

Ton-scale direct dark matter search experiments should be sensitive to neutrino-induced recoil events from either 8 B solar neutrinos or the brief but intense flux from a core collapse supernova in the Milky Way. These low-threshold detectors are sensitive to the very low recoil energies, of order 10 keV, deposited via coherent elastic scatters between supernova neutrinos and target nuclei. Large superheated fluid detectors like PICO-500, a bubble chamber to be initially filled with an active target of 1 t of C 3 F 8 , should see multiple-bubble events from CEνNS if the detector is live during a neutrino burst from a supernova at a distance up to 10 kpc. This paper discusses conditions under which bubble chambers could be used as an independent measurement in the event of a supernova similar to SN 1987A, with particular sensitivity to the currently less-constrained heavy-lepton ν x channel.

Monochromatic dark neutrinos and boosted dark matter in noble liquid direct detection

“…6 we show the values of the coupling G B (relative to G F ) that are excluded by xenont and borexino proton recoils, and probe-able by darwin and argo, if the boosted dark matter flux corresponded to the annihilation cross section in Eq. (13). We see that in this scenario darwin and argo would be sensitive to couplings ∼ 10 −3 − 10 −2 × G F for dark matter masses ∼ 20-1000 MeV.…”

“…Moreover, search channels at neutrino detectors are typically sensitive to only ν e and/orν e flavors, which may make up but a fraction of the dark neutrino flux, whereas the coherent nuclear scattering channel at direct detection is equally sensitive to the flavors ν e ,ν e , ν µ ,ν µ , ν τ ,ν τ . These features have been exploited to determine direct detection sensitivities to signals of neutrinos from a future core-collapse supernova burst [10][11][12][13], solar neutrinos [14][15][16][17], and products of dark matter decay [18] and annihilations [19]. Reference [19] used a lux dataset with 0.027 tonne-years of exposure to constrain dark neutrinos, but we find that these constraints were weaker than those derived from neutrino experiments in [2] and [9]; the ∼ 100-1000 tonne-year datasets at darwin and argo would reverse this hierarchy of bounds.…”

Presupernova neutrinos in large dark matter direct detection experiments

“…A burst of SN-neutrinos is readily detectable with large direct detection experiments for a SN located O(10) kpc away (i.e. Milky Way distance-scales) [6][7][8][9][10]. While argon detectors have not been previously explored as tar- gets for SN neutrinos, the resulting sensitivity can be expected to be similar to xenon-based configurations.…”

“…The general picture of the outlined supernova mechanism was decisively confirmed by the observation of neutrinos from SN 1987A [2][3][4]. With the expected rate of Galactic core-collapse SNe of around few per century, anticipation and preparation for future SN observations is a principal goal of large-scale neutrino experiments [5], however large scale direct dark matter detection experiments will also be sensitive to SNe neutrinos in a highly complementary manner [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Neutrinos from Type Ia and Failed Core-Collapse Supernovae at Dark Matter Detectors

“…Neutrino experiments such as IceCube, Hyper-K, dune, juno, and halo will be prepared to detect supernova neutrinos in a range of channels [3,4], but lately it has been recognized that dark matter experiments, designed for detecting coherent elastic nuclear recoils, are an equally important player capable of uncovering complementary physics. Whilst studies have been performed on elastic nuclear recoils produced by neutrinos from successful core-collapse supernovae [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and pre-supernova nuclear burning [14], they are lacking for neutrinos from Type Ia and failed core-collapse. The purpose of this note is to close these gaps, and to comment on this detection channel vis-à-vis those at neutrino experiments.…”