Mirror dark matter will be confirmed or excluded by XENON1T

Abstract

Mirror dark matter, where dark matter resides in a hidden sector exactly isomorphic to the standard model, can be probed via direct detection experiments by both nuclear and electron recoils if the kinetic mixing interaction exists. In fact, the kinetic mixing interaction appears to be a prerequisite for consistent small scale structure: Mirror dark matter halos around spiral galaxies are dissipative - losing energy via dark photon emission. This ongoing energy loss requires a substantial energy input, which can be sourced from ordinary supernovae via kinetic mixing induced processes in the supernova's core. Astrophysical considerations thereby give a lower limit on the kinetic mixing strength, and indeed lower limits on both nuclear and electron recoil rates in direct detection experiments can be estimated. We show here that potentially all of the viable parameter space will be probed in forthcoming XENON experiments including LUX and XENON1T. Thus, we anticipate that these experiments will provide a definitive test of the mirror dark matter hypothesis.