Inelastic frontier: Discovering dark matter at high recoil energy
Abstract
There exist well-motivated models of particle dark matter which predominantly scatter inelastically off nuclei in direct detection experiments. This inelastic transition causes the dark matter to upscatter in terrestrial experiments into an excited state up to 550 keV heavier than the dark matter itself. An inelastic transition of this size is highly suppressed by both kinematics and nuclear form factors. In this paper, we extend previous studies of inelastic dark matter to determine the present bounds on the scattering cross section and the prospects for improvements in sensitivity. Three scenarios provide illustrative examples: nearly pure Higgsino supersymmetric dark matter, magnetic inelastic dark matter, and inelastic models with dark photon exchange. We determine the elastic scattering rate (through loop diagrams involving the heavy state) as well as verify that exothermic transitions are negligible (in the parameter space we consider). Presently, the strongest bounds on the cross section are from xenon at LUX-PandaX (when the mass splitting δ≲160 keV), iodine at PICO (when 160≲δ≲300 keV), and tungsten at CRESST (when δ≳300 keV). Amusingly, once δ≳200 keV, weak scale (and larger) dark matter–nucleon scattering cross sections are allowed. The relative competitiveness of these diverse experiments is governed by the upper bound on the recoilmore »
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN (United States)
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, OR (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, OR (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1331122
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1338116; OSTI ID: 1601474
- Report Number(s):
- FERMILAB-PUB-16-301-T; arXiv:1608.02662
Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010; PRVDAQ; 1480187
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11359; SC0011640
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review D
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 94; Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; 72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Citation Formats
Bramante, Joseph, Fox, Patrick J., Kribs, Graham D., and Martin, Adam. Inelastic frontier: Discovering dark matter at high recoil energy. United States: N. p., 2016.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.94.115026.
Bramante, Joseph, Fox, Patrick J., Kribs, Graham D., & Martin, Adam. Inelastic frontier: Discovering dark matter at high recoil energy. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.115026
Bramante, Joseph, Fox, Patrick J., Kribs, Graham D., and Martin, Adam. Tue .
"Inelastic frontier: Discovering dark matter at high recoil energy". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.115026. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1331122.
@article{osti_1331122,
title = {Inelastic frontier: Discovering dark matter at high recoil energy},
author = {Bramante, Joseph and Fox, Patrick J. and Kribs, Graham D. and Martin, Adam},
abstractNote = {There exist well-motivated models of particle dark matter which predominantly scatter inelastically off nuclei in direct detection experiments. This inelastic transition causes the dark matter to upscatter in terrestrial experiments into an excited state up to 550 keV heavier than the dark matter itself. An inelastic transition of this size is highly suppressed by both kinematics and nuclear form factors. In this paper, we extend previous studies of inelastic dark matter to determine the present bounds on the scattering cross section and the prospects for improvements in sensitivity. Three scenarios provide illustrative examples: nearly pure Higgsino supersymmetric dark matter, magnetic inelastic dark matter, and inelastic models with dark photon exchange. We determine the elastic scattering rate (through loop diagrams involving the heavy state) as well as verify that exothermic transitions are negligible (in the parameter space we consider). Presently, the strongest bounds on the cross section are from xenon at LUX-PandaX (when the mass splitting δ≲160 keV), iodine at PICO (when 160≲δ≲300 keV), and tungsten at CRESST (when δ≳300 keV). Amusingly, once δ≳200 keV, weak scale (and larger) dark matter–nucleon scattering cross sections are allowed. The relative competitiveness of these diverse experiments is governed by the upper bound on the recoil energies employed by each experiment, as well as strong sensitivity to the mass of the heaviest element in the detector. Several implications, including sizable recoil energy-dependent annual modulation and improvements for future experiments, are discussed. We show that the xenon experiments can improve on the PICO results, if they were to analyze their existing data over a larger range of recoil energies, i.e., 20–500 keV Intriguingly, CRESST has reported several events in the recoil energy range 45–100 keV that, if interpreted as dark matter scattering, is compatible with δ~200 keV and an approximately weak scale cross section. Here, future data from PICO and CRESST can test this speculation, while xenon experiments could verify or refute this upon analyzing their higher energy recoil data.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.94.115026},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 11,
volume = 94,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2016},
month = {Tue Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2016}
}
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