Limits on dark matter effective field theory parameters with CRESST-II

G Angloher,F Pröbst,M Wüstrich,A D’Addabbo,A Münster,E Bertoldo,K Schäffner,A Erb,M Mancuso,L Canonica,J Rothe,A Langenkämper,M Kiefer,J Jochum,A Bento,L Stodolsky,S Schönert,J Schieck,M Olmi,V Schipperges,V P Morgalyuk ,H Kluck,V Zema,F Von Feilitzsch ,M Stahlberg,D Hauff,S Di Lorenzo,V.m Mokina ,R Strauß ,C Strandhagen,I Usherov,N Ferreiro Iachellini,F Petricca,E Mondragón ,C Pagliarone,C Türkoğlu ,C Bucci,W Potzel,M Willers,P Gorla,X Defaÿ ,Patrick Bauer ,F Reindl,H Kraus,Riccardo Catena

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-6523-4

Abstract

CRESST is a direct dark matter search experiment, aiming for an observation of nuclear recoils induced by the interaction of dark matter particles with cryogenic scintillating calcium tungstate crystals. Instead of confining ourselves to standard spin-independent and spin-dependent searches, we re-analyze data from CRESST-II using a more general effective field theory (EFT) framework. On many of the EFT coupling constants, improved exclusion limits in the low-mass region (< 3–4 GeV/c^2) are presented.

Highlights

The elusive nature of dark matter remains one of the major unsolved mysteries in modern physics
Reasons, only uncertainties on the nuclear response functions at zero momentum transfer are relevant for light dark matter
Using large-scale nuclear structure calculations, similar results were found for the nuclear response functions of interest in the case of Xenon isotopes [38]

Summary

Introduction

The elusive nature of dark matter remains one of the major unsolved mysteries in modern physics. One leading hypothesis is that dark matter consists of as yet undetected particles with interactions at the weak scale (or below) [1]. The direct detection technique will play a key role in this context [3] It searches for nuclear recoils induced by the non-relativistic scattering of Milky Way dark matter particles in low-background detectors [4,5]. WIMPs (for weakly interacting massive particles) are the leading dark matter candidate in this mass range [7]. On the other hand, when the dark matter particle mass is below few GeV/c2, cryogenic experiments provide the best sensitivity to dark matter–nucleon interactions because of the low energy threshold these detectors can achieve [6]. The experiment CRESST (for Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) has pioneered the search for sub-GeV/c2 dark matter, and currently places the most stringent exclusion limits on the spin-

Objectives

Results

Conclusion