Abstract
Direct searches for Dark Matter (DM) are continuously improving, probing down to lower and lower DM-nucleon interaction cross sections. For strongly-interacting massive particle (SIMP) Dark Matter, however, the accessible cross section is bounded from above due to the stopping effect of the atmosphere, Earth and detector shielding. We present a careful calculation of the SIMP signal rate, focusing on super-heavy DM ($m_\chi \gtrsim 10^5 \,\,\mathrm{GeV}$) for which the standard nuclear-stopping formalism is applicable, and provide code for implementing this calculation numerically. With recent results from the low-threshold CRESST 2017 surface run, we improve the maximum cross section reach of direct detection searches by a factor of around 5000, for DM masses up to $10^8 \,\,\mathrm{GeV}$. A reanalysis of the longer-exposure, sub-surface CDMS-I results (published in 2002) improves the previous cross section reach by two orders of magnitude, for masses up to $10^{15} \,\,\mathrm{GeV}$. Along with complementary constraints from SIMP capture and annihilation in the Earth and Sun, these improved limits from direct nuclear scattering searches close a number of windows in the SIMP parameter space in the mass range $10^6$ GeV to $10^{13}$ GeV, of particular interest for heavy DM produced gravitationally at the end of inflation.
Highlights
Direct detection experiments aim to detect dark matter (DM) by measuring the energy of nuclear recoils, induced by the interaction of DM in the Galactic halo with nuclei in the detector [1,2]
We focus here on two experiments: the CRESST 2017 surface run [6], operated at the Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPI) Munich in 2017, and CDMS-I [45,46], operated at the Stanford Underground Facility (SUF) in
Limits on strongly interacting massive particle (SIMP) from CDMS-I were derived in Ref. [37], and we present a refinement of those limits, taking into account form factor suppression of the SIMP
Summary
Direct detection experiments aim to detect dark matter (DM) by measuring the energy of nuclear recoils, induced by the interaction of DM in the Galactic halo with nuclei in the detector [1,2]. Whose distribution may be affected by scattering in the Earth [20,21,22] Much of this has been focused on light (sub-GeV) DM where lower limits from conventional direct detection experiments weaken, meaning that moderate DM-nucleon scattering cross sections have not yet been excluded [23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. We can is expected to be approximate the trajectories of DM particles as straight lines, allowing us to use the standard nuclear stopping formalism and avoiding the need for complicated Monte Carlo calculations All code for performing the calculations in this paper, along with all results and plots, is made freely available online, along with the numerical code VERNE, at https://github.com/bradkav/verne [44]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
