Abstract
We explore the stopping effect that results from interactions between dark matter and nuclei as the dark matter particles travel undergound towards the detector. Although this effect is negligible for heavy dark matter particles, there is parameter phase space where the underground interactions of the dark matter particles with the nuclei can create observable differences in the spectrum. Dark matter particles that arrive on the detector from below can have less energy from the ones arriving from above. These differences can be potentially detectable by upcoming directional detectors. This can unveil a large amount of information regarding the type and strength of interactions between nuclei and light dark matter candidates.
Highlights
There is strong evidence for the existence of Dark Matter (DM) nowdays
One can clearly see that the asymmetry increases with increasing cross section up to the point where the cross section becomes so strong that even DM particles coming from the top decelerate so much that cannot produce a recoil above the given values chosen in the figure (i.e. 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 keV)
One can conclude that especially for light enough DM particles where the allowed DM-nucleon cross section might not be so small since it is barely constrained by current direct detection experiments, the asymmetry in the up-down directional detection due to interactions of DM with underground atoms is a large fraction of the overall asymmetry that includes the asymmetry due to the difference in the up-down DM flux caused by the motion of the earth in the galaxy
Summary
Searches for DM include efforts for laboratory production (e.g. LHC), possible indirect signals from the galaxy and beyond (e.g. due to annihilation or decay of DM to conventional photons or other Standard Model paticles), and direct detection where underground detectors could potentially register rare collisions between an incoming DM particle and a nucleus in the detector. Current direct search experiments can register events with a particular recoil energy, but they cannot identify the direction of the recoil. A new generation of experiments that can detect the direction of the recoil is on the way [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The directional detection of these experiments is based on time projection diffuse gas chambers that have the capability of recostructing the nuclear recoil track, giving information about the direction of the incoming DM particle. The above experiments are not yet competitive in setting DM limits with respect to the current non-directional underground detectors, they could start probing interesting DM parameter space in the near future
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