The aim of the current work is a detailed time-series analysis of the data from Dark Matter direct detection experiments as well as related datasets. We examine recent claims that the cosmic ray muon flux can be responsible for generating the modulation signals seen by DAMA and, more recently, by the CoGeNT collaboration. We find no evidence for such a strong correlation and show that the two phenomena differ in their power spectrum, phase, and possibly in amplitude. In addition, we investigate in more detail, the time dependence of Dark Matter scattering. Since the signal is periodic with period of a year (due to the Earth's motion around the Sun), the presence of higher harmonics can be expected. We show that the higher harmonics generically have similar phase to the annual modulation and the biannual mode in particular could provide another handle in searching for Dark Matter in the laboratory.
If dark matter is composed of new fundamental particles, Earth's orbital motion around the Sun may induce an annual modulation in the rate at which these particles interact in a terrestrial detector. The DAMA collaboration has identified at a 12$σ$ confidence level such an annual modulation in their event rate. One previously proposed explanation is `plasma dark matter' (e.g. mirror dark matter) which would have electron recoils in the detector from interactions via kinetic mixing. We perform a chi-squared goodness of fit test of this plasma dark matter model to DAMA/LIBRA modulation amplitude…
We investigate the diurnal modulation of the event rate for dark matter scattering on solid targets arising from the directionally dependent defect creation threshold energy. In particular, we quantify how this effect would help in separating dark matter signal from the neutrino background. We perform a benchmark analysis for a germanium detector and compute how the reach of the experiment is affected by including the timing information of the scattering events. We observe that for light dark matter just above the detection threshold the magnitude of the annual modulation is enhanced. In this …
Single phonon excitations are sensitive probes of light dark matter in the keV-GeV mass window. For anisotropic target materials, the signal depends on the direction of the incoming dark matter wind and exhibits a daily modulation. We discuss in detail the various sources of anisotropy, and carry out a comparative study of 26 crystal targets, focused on sub-MeV dark matter benchmarks. We compute the modulation reach for the most promising targets, corresponding to the cross section where the daily modulation can be observed for a given exposure, which allows us to combine the strength of DM-ph…
Statistics of Daily Modulation in Dark Matter Direct Detection Experiments
The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；University of Wisconsin-Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；University of Oregon（俄勒冈大学）
Aromatic organic compounds, because of their small excitation energies ~ O(few eV) and scintillating properties, are promising targets for detecting dark matter of mass ~ O(few MeV). Additionally, their planar molecular structures lead to large anisotropies in the electronic wavefunctions, yielding a significant daily modulation in the event rate expected to be observed in crystals of these molecules. We characterize the daily modulation rate of dark matter interacting with an anisotropic scintillating organic crystal such as trans-stilbene, and show that daily modulation is an ~ O(1) fraction…
SENSEI: A Search for Diurnal Modulation in sub-GeV Dark Matter Scattering
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory（费米国家加速器实验室）；Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学卡弗里宇宙物理学研究所）；Institut für Hochenergiephysik der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften（奥地利科学院高能物理研究所）；Technische Universität Wien（维也纳工业大学）；Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学）；Tel-Aviv University（特拉维夫大学）；University of Oregon（俄勒冈大学）；Stony Brook University（石溪大学）
Dirac materials, because of their small ${\cal O}(\mbox{meV})$ band gap, are a promising target for dark photon-mediated scattering and absorption of light dark matter. In this paper, we characterize the daily modulation rate of dark matter interacting with a Dirac material due to anisotropies in their crystal structure. We show that daily modulation is an ${\cal O}(1)$ fraction of the total rate for dark matter scattering in the Dirac material ZrTe$_5$. When present, the modulation is dominated by the orientation of the material's dielectric tensor with respect to the dark matter wind, and is…
Low threshold detectors with single-electron excitation sensitivity to nuclear recoil events in solid-state detectors are also sensitive to the crystalline structure of the target and, therefore, to the recoil direction via the anisotropic energy threshold for defect creation in the detector material. We investigate this effect and the resulting daily and annual modulation of the observable event rate for dark matter mass range from 0.2 to 5 GeV/c$^{2}$ in a silicon detector. We show that the directional dependence of the threshold energy and the motion of the laboratory result in modulation o…
Previous work has argued that the DAMA annual modulation signal might be due to electron recoils in plasma dark matter models. A specific model assuming mirror dark matter and featuring collisional shielding of a detector due to Earth-bound dark matter was put forward by this author [arXiv:1806.04293]. That explanation predicted a low energy electron recoil signal in the XENON1T experiment. In light of the excess of electron recoils observed in XENON1T, we re-examine that model's predictions for both DAMA and XENON1T.
Experimental collaborations for the large hadron collider conducted many and various searches for supersymmetry. In the absence of signals, lower limits were put on sparticle masses but usually within frameworks with (over-) simplifications relative to the entire indications by supersymmetry models. For complementing current interpretations of experimental bounds, we introduce a 30-parameters version of the R-parity conserving minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM-30). Using a sample of the MSSM-30 which are in harmony with cold dark matter, flavour and precision electroweak constraints,…
