Solar neutrinos as a signal and background in direct-detection experiments searching for sub-GeV dark matter with electron recoils
Abstract
Direct-detection experiments sensitive to low-energy electron recoils from sub-GeV dark matter interactions will also be sensitive to solar neutrinos via coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering (CNS), since the recoiling nucleus can produce a small ionization signal. Solar neutrinos constitute both an interesting signal in their own right and a potential background to a dark matter search that cannot be controlled or reduced by improved shielding, material purification and handling, or improved detector design. We explore these two possibilities in detail for semiconductor (silicon and germanium) and xenon targets, considering several possibilities for the unmeasured ionization efficiency at low energies. For dark-matter-electron-scattering searches, neutrinos start being an important background for exposures larger than ~1–10 kg – years in silicon and germanium, and for exposures larger than ~0.1–1 kg–year in xenon. For the absorption of bosonic dark matter (dark photons and axion-like particles) by electrons, neutrinos are most relevant for masses below ~1 keV and again slightly more important in xenon. Treating the neutrinos as a signal, we find that the CNS of 8B neutrinos can be observed with ~2σ significance with exposures of ~2 , 7, and 20 kg-years in xenon, germanium, and silicon, respectively, assuming there are no other backgrounds. We givemore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Research Foundation For The State Univ. Of New York, Albany, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1438068
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1501438
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0017938
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review D
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Volume: 97 Journal Issue: 9; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Citation Formats
Essig, Rouven, Sholapurkar, Mukul, and Yu, Tien-Tien. Solar neutrinos as a signal and background in direct-detection experiments searching for sub-GeV dark matter with electron recoils. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029.
Essig, Rouven, Sholapurkar, Mukul, & Yu, Tien-Tien. Solar neutrinos as a signal and background in direct-detection experiments searching for sub-GeV dark matter with electron recoils. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029
Essig, Rouven, Sholapurkar, Mukul, and Yu, Tien-Tien. Mon .
"Solar neutrinos as a signal and background in direct-detection experiments searching for sub-GeV dark matter with electron recoils". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029.
@article{osti_1438068,
title = {Solar neutrinos as a signal and background in direct-detection experiments searching for sub-GeV dark matter with electron recoils},
author = {Essig, Rouven and Sholapurkar, Mukul and Yu, Tien-Tien},
abstractNote = {Direct-detection experiments sensitive to low-energy electron recoils from sub-GeV dark matter interactions will also be sensitive to solar neutrinos via coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering (CNS), since the recoiling nucleus can produce a small ionization signal. Solar neutrinos constitute both an interesting signal in their own right and a potential background to a dark matter search that cannot be controlled or reduced by improved shielding, material purification and handling, or improved detector design. We explore these two possibilities in detail for semiconductor (silicon and germanium) and xenon targets, considering several possibilities for the unmeasured ionization efficiency at low energies. For dark-matter-electron-scattering searches, neutrinos start being an important background for exposures larger than ~1–10 kg – years in silicon and germanium, and for exposures larger than ~0.1–1 kg–year in xenon. For the absorption of bosonic dark matter (dark photons and axion-like particles) by electrons, neutrinos are most relevant for masses below ~1 keV and again slightly more important in xenon. Treating the neutrinos as a signal, we find that the CNS of 8B neutrinos can be observed with ~2σ significance with exposures of ~2 , 7, and 20 kg-years in xenon, germanium, and silicon, respectively, assuming there are no other backgrounds. We give an example for how this would constrain nonstandard neutrino interactions. Neutrino components at lower energy can only be detected if the ionization efficiency is sufficiently large. In this case, observing pep neutrinos via CNS requires exposures ≳ 10–100 kg–years in silicon or germanium (~1000 kg-years in xenon), and observing CNO neutrinos would require an order of magnitude more exposure. Only silicon could potentially detect 7Be neutrinos. Thus, these measurements would allow for a direct measurement of the electron-neutrino survival probability over a wide energy range.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 9,
volume = 97,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {5}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.095029
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 47 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Assessing the discovery potential of directional detection of dark matter
journal, February 2012
- Billard, J.; Mayet, F.; Santos, D.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 85, Issue 3
Detecting ultralight bosonic dark matter via absorption in superconductors
journal, July 2016
- Hochberg, Yonit; Lin, Tongyan; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 1
Measurement of the response of heat-and-ionization germanium detectors to nuclear recoils
journal, July 2007
- Benoit, A.; Bergé, L.; Blümer, J.
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 577, Issue 3
Exploring ν signals in dark matter detectors
journal, July 2012
- Harnik, Roni; Kopp, Joachim; Machado, Pedro A. N.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2012, Issue 07
Bandgap Dependence and Related Features of Radiation Ionization Energies in Semiconductors
journal, March 1968
- Klein, Claude A.
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 39, Issue 4
Review of mathematics, numerical factors, and corrections for dark matter experiments based on elastic nuclear recoil
journal, December 1996
- Lewin, J. D.; Smith, P. F.
- Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Direct detection constraints on dark photon dark matter
journal, July 2015
- An, Haipeng; Pospelov, Maxim; Pradler, Josef
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 747
Erratum: First axion results from the XENON100 experiment [Phys. Rev. D 90 , 062009 (2014)]
journal, January 2017
- Aprile, E.; Agostini, F.; Alfonsi, M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 95, Issue 2
Neutrino backgrounds to dark matter searches
journal, August 2007
- Monroe, Jocelyn; Fisher, Peter
- Physical Review D, Vol. 76, Issue 3
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials
journal, August 2016
- Hochberg, Yonit; Pyle, Matt; Zhao, Yue
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 8
Neutrino oscillations and stellar collapse
journal, November 1979
- Wolfenstein, L.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 20, Issue 10
Liquid xenon detectors for particle physics and astrophysics
journal, July 2010
- Aprile, E.; Doke, T.
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 3, p. 2053-2097
The Chemical Composition of the Sun
journal, September 2009
- Asplund, Martin; Grevesse, Nicolas; Sauval, A. Jacques
- Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 47, Issue 1
Present and future bounds on non-standard neutrino interactions
journal, March 2003
- Davidson, Sacha; na-Garay, Carlos Pe; Rius, Nuria
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2003, Issue 03
Alive and well: A short review about standard solar models
journal, April 2016
- Serenelli, Aldo
- The European Physical Journal A, Vol. 52, Issue 4
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with scintillating targets
journal, July 2017
- Derenzo, Stephen; Essig, Rouven; Massari, Andrea
- Physical Review D, Vol. 96, Issue 1
Directional detection of dark matter with two-dimensional targets
journal, September 2017
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kahn, Yonatan; Lisanti, Mariangela
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 772
Combined analysis of all three phases of solar neutrino data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
journal, August 2013
- Aharmim, B.; Ahmed, S. N.; Anthony, A. E.
- Physical Review C, Vol. 88, Issue 2
Properties of neutrinos in a class of gauge theories
journal, March 1978
- Bég, M. A. B.; Marciano, W. J.; Ruderman, M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 17, Issue 5
Can solar neutrinos be a serious background in direct dark matter searches?
journal, November 2008
- Vergados, J. D.; Ejiri, H.
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 804, Issue 1-2
Solar and atmospheric neutrinos: Background sources for the direct dark matter searches
journal, September 2010
- Gütlein, A.; Ciemniak, C.; von Feilitzsch, F.
- Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 34, Issue 2
Final results of Borexino Phase-I on low-energy solar neutrino spectroscopy
journal, June 2014
- Bellini, G.; Benziger, J.; Bick, D.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 89, Issue 11
Non-standard interactions of solar neutrinos in dark matter experiments
journal, October 2017
- Dutta, Bhaskar; Liao, Shu; Strigari, Louis E.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 773
Search for low-mass WIMPs in a 0.6 kg day exposure of the DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB
journal, October 2016
- Aguilar-Arevalo, A.; Amidei, D.; Bertou, X.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 8
Semiconductor probes of light dark matter
journal, November 2012
- Graham, Peter W.; Kaplan, David E.; Rajendran, Surjeet
- Physics of the Dark Universe, Vol. 1, Issue 1-2
Neutrino oscillations in matter
journal, May 1978
- Wolfenstein, L.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 17, Issue 9
Exotic decays of the muon and heavy leptons in gauge theories
journal, April 1977
- Marciano, W. J.; Sanda, A. I.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 67, Issue 3
Band-Gap Effects in the Stopping of Atoms in Germanium
journal, November 1968
- Chasman, C.; Jones, K. W.; Kraner, H. W.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 21, Issue 20
Large-mass ultralow noise germanium detectors: performance and applications in neutrino and astroparticle physics
journal, September 2007
- Barbeau, P. S.; Collar, J. I.; Tench, O.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2007, Issue 09
Solar neutrino measurements in Super-Kamiokande-IV
journal, September 2016
- Abe, K.; Haga, Y.; Hayato, Y.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 5
Energy deposition of energetic silicon atoms within a silicon lattice
journal, April 1990
- Zecher, P.; Wang, D.; Rapaport, J.
- Physical Review A, Vol. 41, Issue 7
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter with semiconductor targets
journal, May 2016
- Essig, Rouven; Fernández-Serra, Marivi; Mardon, Jeremy
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 5
Direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter
journal, April 2012
- Essig, Rouven; Mardon, Jeremy; Volansky, Tomer
- Physical Review D, Vol. 85, Issue 7
Experimental study of the response of semiconductor detectors to low-energy photons
journal, January 2000
- Lépy, M. C.; Campbell, J. L.; Laborie, J. M.
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 439, Issue 2-3
Neutrino electromagnetic properties
journal, December 2009
- Giunti, C.; Studenikin, A.
- Physics of Atomic Nuclei, Vol. 72, Issue 12
Coherent effects of a weak neutral current
journal, March 1974
- Freedman, Daniel Z.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 9, Issue 5
Thermal detection of single e-h pairs in a biased silicon crystal detector
journal, January 2018
- Romani, R. K.; Brink, P. L.; Cabrera, B.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 4
Neutrino physics with multi-ton scale liquid xenon detectors
journal, January 2014
- Baudis, L.; Ferella, A.; Kish, A.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 01
Searching for dark absorption with direct detection experiments
journal, June 2017
- Bloch, Itay M.; Essig, Rouven; Tobioka, Kohsaku
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 6
First Direct Detection Limits on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from XENON10
journal, July 2012
- Essig, Rouven; Manalaysay, Aaron; Mardon, Jeremy
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 2
Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials
journal, January 2018
- Hochberg, Yonit; Kahn, Yonatan; Lisanti, Mariangela
- Physical Review D, Vol. 97, Issue 1
First Evidence of Solar Neutrinos by Direct Detection in Borexino
journal, February 2012
- Bellini, G.; Benziger, J.; Bick, D.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 108, Issue 5
Probing new physics with coherent neutrino scattering off nuclei
journal, December 2005
- Barranco, Juan; Miranda, Omar G.; Rashba, Timur I.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2005, Issue 12
Measurement of the low-energy quenching factor in germanium using an photoneutron source
journal, December 2016
- Scholz, B. J.; Chavarria, A. E.; Collar, J. I.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 12
Solar constraints on hidden photons re-visited
journal, August 2013
- Redondo, Javier; Raffelt, Georg
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2013, Issue 08
Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter
journal, January 2016
- Hochberg, Yonit; Zhao, Yue; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 1
Energy lost to ionization by 254-eV atoms stopping in Ge
journal, April 1975
- Jones, K. W.; Kraner, H. W.
- Physical Review A, Vol. 11, Issue 4
Revisiting the axion bounds from the Galactic white dwarf luminosity function
journal, October 2014
- Bertolami, M. M. Miller; Melendez, B. E.; Althaus, L. G.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 10
CNO neutrino Grand Prix: the race to solve the solar metallicity problem
journal, April 2018
- Cerdeño, David G.; Davis, Jonathan H.; Fairbairn, Malcolm
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 04
Measurements of Fano factors in silicon and germanium in the low-energy X-ray region
journal, November 1997
- Lowe, B. G.
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 399, Issue 2-3
Calibration of a Ge crystal with nuclear recoils for the development of a dark matter detector
journal, August 1995
- Messous, Y.; Chambon, B.; Chazal, V.
- Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 3, Issue 4
Sensitivity to -prime and nonstandard neutrino interactions from ultralow threshold neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering
journal, January 2016
- Dutta, Bhaskar; Mahapatra, Rupak; Strigari, Louis E.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 93, Issue 1
Defect production in collision cascades in elemental semiconductors and fcc metals
journal, April 1998
- Nordlund, K.; Ghaly, M.; Averback, R. S.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 57, Issue 13
Germanium detector response to nuclear recoils in searching for dark matter
journal, October 2012
- Barker, D.; Mei, D. -M.
- Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 38
Charge conjugation and neutrino magnetic moments
journal, July 1990
- Georgi, Howard; Randall, Lisa
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 244, Issue 2
Sub-GeV dark matter detection with electron recoils in carbon nanotubes
journal, January 2018
- Cavoto, G.; Luchetta, F.; Polosa, A. D.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 776
Semi-empirical calculation of quenching factors for ions in scintillators
journal, February 2010
- Tretyak, V. I.
- Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 33, Issue 1
New Solar Opacities, Abundances, Helioseismology, and Neutrino Fluxes
journal, January 2005
- Bahcall, John N.; Serenelli, Aldo M.; Basu, Sarbani
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 621, Issue 1
Absorption of light dark matter in semiconductors
journal, January 2017
- Hochberg, Yonit; Lin, Tongyan; Zurek, Kathryn M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 95, Issue 2
A Search for Neutrinos from the Solar hep Reaction and the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
journal, December 2006
- Aharmim, B.; Ahmed, S. N.; Anthony, A. E.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 653, Issue 2
Reactor searches for neutrino magnetic moment as a probe of extra dimensions
journal, September 2004
- Mohapatra, R. N.; Ng, Siew-Phang; Yu, Haibo
- Physical Review D, Vol. 70, Issue 5
A comprehensive study of low-energy response for xenon-based dark matter experiments
journal, March 2017
- Wang, L.; Mei, D-M
- Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, Vol. 44, Issue 5
New stellar constraints on dark photons
journal, October 2013
- An, Haipeng; Pospelov, Maxim; Pradler, Josef
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 725, Issue 4-5
Detecting cold dark-matter candidates
journal, June 1986
- Drukier, Andrzej K.; Freese, Katherine; Spergel, David N.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 33, Issue 12
Improved Limits on Scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from Reanalysis of 2013 LUX Data
journal, April 2016
- Akerib, D. S.; Araújo, H. M.; Bai, X.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 16
The Results of Search for the Neutrino Magnetic Moment in GEMMA Experiment
journal, January 2012
- Beda, A. G.; Brudanin, V. B.; Egorov, V. G.
- Advances in High Energy Physics, Vol. 2012
Neutrino floor at ultralow threshold
journal, May 2016
- Strigari, Louis E.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 93, Issue 10
Observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
journal, August 2017
- Akimov, D.; Albert, J. B.; An, P.
- Science, Vol. 357, Issue 6356
Updated determination of the solar neutrino fluxes from solar neutrino data
journal, March 2016
- Bergström, Johannes; Gonzalez-Garcia, M. C.; Maltoni, Michele
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 3
Measurements of ionization produced in silicon crystals by low-energy silicon atoms
journal, February 1992
- Dougherty, Brian L.
- Physical Review A, Vol. 45, Issue 3
Neutrino coherent scattering rates at direct dark matter detectors
journal, October 2009
- Strigari, Louis E.
- New Journal of Physics, Vol. 11, Issue 10
How Do Uncertainties in the Surface Chemical Composition of the Sun Affect the Predicted Solar Neutrino Fluxes?
journal, June 2005
- Bahcall, John N.; Serenelli, Aldo M.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 626, Issue 1
Neutrino electromagnetic form factors
journal, June 1989
- Vogel, P.; Engel, J.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 39, Issue 11
First Direct-Detection Constraints on eV-Scale Hidden-Photon Dark Matter with DAMIC at SNOLAB
journal, April 2017
- Aguilar-Arevalo, A.; Amidei, D.; Bertou, X.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 14
Low-energy electronic recoil in xenon detectors by solar neutrinos
journal, November 2017
- Chen, Jiunn-Wei; Chi, Hsin-Chang; Liu, C. -P.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 774
Measurement of the Energy Loss of Germanium Atoms to Electrons in Germanium at Energies Below 100 keV
journal, August 1965
- Chasman, C.; Jones, K. W.; Ristinen, R. A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 6
Erratum: Search for Light Dark Matter in XENON10 Data [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 , 051301 (2011)]
journal, June 2013
- Angle, J.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 110, Issue 24
Measurement of the ionization of slow silicon nuclei in silicon for the calibration of a silicon dark-matter detector
journal, November 1990
- Gerbier, G.; Lesquoy, E.; Rich, J.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 42, Issue 9
The Large-Sample Distribution of the Likelihood Ratio for Testing Composite Hypotheses
journal, March 1938
- Wilks, S. S.
- The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Natural suppression of symmetry violation in gauge theories: Muon- and electron-lepton-number nonconservation
journal, September 1977
- Lee, Benjamin W.; Shrock, Robert E.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 16, Issue 5
Search for Light Dark Matter in XENON10 Data
journal, July 2011
- Angle, J.; Aprile, E.; Arneodo, F.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 5
Bolometric detection of neutrinos
journal, July 1985
- Cabrera, Blas; Krauss, Lawrence M.; Wilczek, Frank
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 55, Issue 1
Complementarity of dark matter detectors in light of the neutrino background
journal, October 2014
- Ruppin, F.; Billard, J.; Figueroa-Feliciano, E.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 90, Issue 8
Projected sensitivity of the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment
journal, April 2017
- Agnese, R.; Anderson, A. J.; Aramaki, T.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 95, Issue 8
Neutrino magnetic moments in left-right symmetric models
journal, December 1998
- Czakon, M.; Gluza, J.; Zrałek, M.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 59, Issue 1
Neutrino Magnetic Moment
conference, January 2006
- Balantekin, A. B.
- ORIGIN OF MATTER AND EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES: International Symposium on Origin of Matter and Evolution of Galaxies 2005: New Horizon of Nuclear Astrophysics and Cosmology, AIP Conference Proceedings
Works referencing / citing this record:
Casting a wide signal net with future direct dark matter detection experiments
journal, July 2018
- Gelmini, Graciela B.; Takhistov, Volodymyr; Witte, Samuel J.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 07
Presupernova neutrinos in large dark matter direct detection experiments
journal, February 2020
- Raj, Nirmal; Takhistov, Volodymyr; Witte, Samuel J.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 101, Issue 4
COHERENT analysis of neutrino generalized interactions
journal, October 2018
- Aristizabal Sierra, D.; De Romeri, Valentina; Rojas, N.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 7
Direct detection experiments at the neutrino dipole portal frontier
journal, April 2019
- Shoemaker, Ian M.; Wyenberg, Jason
- Physical Review D, Vol. 99, Issue 7
Geoneutrinos in large direct detection experiments
journal, May 2019
- Gelmini, Graciela B.; Takhistov, Volodymyr; Witte, Samuel J.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 99, Issue 9
Monochromatic dark neutrinos and boosted dark matter in noble liquid direct detection
journal, May 2019
- McKeen, David; Raj, Nirmal
- Physical Review D, Vol. 99, Issue 10
Relation between the Migdal Effect and Dark Matter-Electron Scattering in Isolated Atoms and Semiconductors
journal, January 2020
- Essig, Rouven; Pradler, Josef; Sholapurkar, Mukul
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 124, Issue 2