Search results for "MASSIVE PARTICLES"
showing 10 items of 39 documents
Determining the dark matter mass with DeepCore
2013
Cosmological and astrophysical observations provide increasing evidence of the existence of dark matter in our Universe. Dark matter particles with a mass above a few GeV can be captured by the Sun, accumulate in the core, annihilate, and produce high energy neutrinos either directly or by subsequent decays of Standard Model particles. We investigate the prospects for indirect dark matter detection in the IceCube/DeepCore neutrino telescope and its capabilities to determine the dark matter mass.
Electron-interacting dark matter: Implications from DAMA/LIBRA-phase2 and prospects for liquid xenon detectors and NaI detectors
2019
We investigate the possibility for the direct detection of low-mass (GeV scale) weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) dark matter in scintillation experiments. Such WIMPs are typically too light to leave appreciable nuclear recoils but may be detected via their scattering off atomic electrons. In particular, the DAMA Collaboration [R. Bernabei et al., Nucl. Phys. At. Energy 19, 307 (2018)] has recently presented strong evidence of an annual modulation in the scintillation rate observed at energies as low as 1 keV. Despite a strong enhancement in the calculated event rate at low energies, we find that an interpretation in terms of electron-interacting WIMPs cannot be consistent with ex…
Dark Matter Search Results from a One Ton-Year Exposure of XENON1T
2018
We report on a search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) using 278.8 days of data collected with the XENON1T experiment at LNGS. XENON1T utilizes a liquid xenon time projection chamber with a fiducial mass of $(1.30 \pm 0.01)$ t, resulting in a 1.0 t$\times$yr exposure. The energy region of interest, [1.4, 10.6] $\mathrm{keV_{ee}}$ ([4.9, 40.9] $\mathrm{keV_{nr}}$), exhibits an ultra-low electron recoil background rate of $(82\substack{+5 \\ -3}\textrm{ (sys)}\pm3\textrm{ (stat)})$ events/$(\mathrm{t}\times\mathrm{yr}\times\mathrm{keV_{ee}})$. No significant excess over background is found and a profile likelihood analysis parameterized in spatial and energy dimensions exclude…
Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC
2016
The MoEDAL experiment is designed to search for magnetic monopoles and other highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy collisions at the LHC. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Interaction Point 8 on the LHC ring, relies on two dedicated direct detection techniques. The first technique is based on stacks of nuclear-track detectors with surface area $\sim$18 m$^2$, sensitive to particle ionisation exceeding a high threshold. These detectors are analysed offline by optical scanning microscopes. The second technique is based on the trapping of charged particles in an array of roughly 800 kg of aluminium samples. These samples are monitored offline for the presence of trap…
Planck-scale effects on WIMP dark matter
2014
There exists a widely known conjecture that gravitational effects violate global symmetries. We study the effect of global-symmetry violating higher-dimension operators induced by Planck-scale physics on the properties of WIMP dark matter. Using an effective description, we show that the lifetime of the WIMP dark matter candidate can satisfy cosmological bounds under reasonable assumptions regarding the strength of the dimension-five operators. On the other hand, the indirect WIMP dark matter detection signal is significantly enhanced due to new decay channels.
Fitting formulae for photon spectra from WIMP annihilation
2011
Annihilation of different dark matter (DM) candidates into Standard Model (SM) particles could be detected through their contribution to the gamma ray fluxes that are measured on the Earth. The magnitude of such contributions depends on the particular DM candidate, but certain imprints of produced photon spectra may be analyzed in a model-independent fashion. In this work we provide the fitting formulae for the photon spectra generated by WIMP annihilation into quarks, leptons and gauge bosons channels in a wide range of WIMP masses.
Analysis of the XENON100 dark matter search data
2014
The XENON100 experiment, situated in the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, aims at the direct detection of dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), based on their interactions with xenon nuclei in an ultra low background dual-phase time projection chamber. This paper describes the general methods developed for the analysis of the XENON100 data. These methods have been used in the 100.9 and 224.6 live days science runs from which results on spin-independent elastic, spin-dependent elastic and inelastic WIMP-nucleon cross-sections have already been reported.
Search for Magnetic Monopoles with the MoEDAL Forward Trapping Detector in 13 TeV Proton-Proton Collisions at the LHC
2017
MoEDAL is designed to identify new physics in the form of long-lived highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy LHC collisions. Its arrays of plastic nuclear-track detectors and aluminium trapping volumes provide two independent passive detection techniques. We present here the results of a first search for magnetic monopole production in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions using the trapping technique, extending a previous publication with 8 TeV data during LHC run-1. A total of 222 kg of MoEDAL trapping detector samples was exposed in the forward region and analysed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges excee…
First Results on the Scalar WIMP-Pion Coupling, Using the XENON1T Experiment
2018
We present first results on the scalar coupling of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) to pions from 1 t yr of exposure with the XENON1T experiment. This interaction is generated when the WIMP couples to a virtual pion exchanged between the nucleons in a nucleus. In contrast to most nonrelativistic operators, these pion-exchange currents can be coherently enhanced by the total number of nucleons and therefore may dominate in scenarios where spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interactions are suppressed. Moreover, for natural values of the couplings, they dominate over the spin-dependent channel due to their coherence in the nucleus. Using the signal model of this new WIMP-pion channel, …
Direct and indirect singlet scalar dark matter detection in the lepton-specific two-Higgs-doublet model
2011
A recent study of gamma-ray data from the Galactic Center motivates the investigation of light (~7-10 GeV) particle dark matter models featuring tau lepton pairs as dominant annihilation final state. The Lepton-Specific two-Higgs-doublet Model (2HDM-L) provides a natural framework where light, singlet scalar dark matter can pair-annihilate dominantly into tau leptons. We calculate the nucleon-dark matter cross section for singlet scalar dark matter within the 2HDM-L framework, and compare with recent results from direct detection experiments. We study how direct dark matter searches can be used to constrain the dark matter interpretation of gamma ray observations, for different dominant ann…