Abstract
We study the sensitivity of the NO$\nu$A near detector to MeV-GeV dark matter while operating symbiotically with the neutrino program. We find that NO$\nu$A could explore a large new region of parameter space over the next few years for dark matter masses below 100 MeV, reaching the thermal target for a scalar dark matter particle for some masses. This result represents a significant improvement over existing probes such as Babar, E137, and LSND.
Highlights
There are many compelling dark matter (DM) candidates with a correspondingly wide range of possible masses and couplings to the visible sector
Some of the strongest constraints on the DM parameter space have been placed by recasting existing neutrino-electron scattering data from the LSND experiment [13,14] and we aim to investigate whether present neutrino facilities could improve on LSND’s sensitivity
Our benchmark model consists of a dark photon (DP) [21] A0μ, the gauge boson of a new dark gauge group Uð1ÞD kinetically mixed with the photon, and a scalar χ charged under Uð1ÞD that serves as a DM candidate: LDM 1⁄4 LA0 þ Lχ ð1Þ
Summary
There are many compelling dark matter (DM) candidates with a correspondingly wide range of possible masses and couplings to the visible sector Probing this vast parameter space requires a correspondingly broad experimental program, and neutrino fixed target facilities can play a role in this quest by searching for signatures of DM scattering with electrons and/or nuclei in their (near) detectors [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10].
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