Direct Detection of Sub-GeV Dark Matter
By R. Essig, J. Mardon, T. Volansky. 2011
562 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Direct detection strategies are proposed for dark matter particles with MeV to GeV mass. In this largely unexplored mass range, dark matter scattering with electrons can cause single-electron ionization signals, which are detectable with current technology. Ultraviolet photons, individual ions, and heat are interesting alternative signals. Focusing on ionization, we calculate the expected dark matter scattering rates and estimate the sensitivity of possible experiments. Backgrounds that may be relevant are discussed. Theoretically interesting models can be probed with existing technologies, and may even be within reach using ongoing direct detection experiments. Significant improvements in sensitivity should be possible with dedicated experiments, opening up a window to new regions in dark matter parameter space.
Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f8af7777338be14fc2bce93be2f13f1fd51584b5
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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Citations in the corpus
- The Dawn of FIMP Dark Matter: A Review of Models and Constraints (2017, background): “In particular, the typical DM-electron cross sections for an MeV FIMP DM could be tested by some next generation experiments [9, 55, 61, 294].”
- Dark matter direct-detection experiments (2015, background): “For instance, sub-GeV dark matter particles could produce detectable ionisation signals [131] and, indeed, limits have been derived for such”
- Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, background): “In the mass range of interest, Xenon10 constraints exist as well [20, 80].”
- A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case (2015, background): “It is important to note that such light WIMPs are challenging to probe via direct scattering of galactic DM particles on atoms [101], and therefore alternative strategies aimed covering this mass range must be developed.”
- Constraining light dark matter with low-energy e+e− colliders (2013, background): “The dotted dark red line shows a possible projection for a germanium-based electron recoil experiment [110], assuming a 1 kg-year exposure and no backgrounds.”
- Colloquium: Annual modulation of dark matter (2013, background): “In addition to ton-size detectors pushing the reach to lower cross sections and heavier dark matter masses, efforts are also being made to explore dark matter with masses below 1 GeV using electron recoils (Essig et al., 2012; Essig, Mardon, and Volansky, 2012).”
- Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils (2019, methodology): “For atomic targets such as liquid xenon or argon, the ionization rate of an electron to final energy Ee in a detector of NT target atoms is given by [4, 5, 25]”
- Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets (2015, methodology): “Once correctly calculated, the effect of all these complications can be completely encoded in an atomic form factor [9].”
- Constraining light dark matter with diffuse X-ray and gamma-ray observations (2013, background): “, [1–9].”
- Modulation Effects in Dark Matter-Electron Scattering Experiments (2015, methodology): “…= √ 2 m e E er , the ionization form factor for spherically symmetric full shells with quantum numbers ( n (cid:96) ) reduces to where χ n(cid:96) is the radial part of the bound-state wave function and the integral runs over allowed values of k between | k (cid:48) ± q | (see, for example, [18]).”