Abstract
If dark matter self-annihilates into neutrinos or a second component of ("boosted") dark matter that is nucleophilic, the annihilation products may be detected with high rates via coherent nuclear scattering. A future multi-ten-tonne liquid xenon detector such as DARWIN, and a multi-hundred-tonne liquid argon detector, ARGO, would be sensitive to the flux of these particles in complementary ranges of $10-1000$ MeV dark matter masses. We derive these sensitivities after accounting for atmospheric and diffuse supernova neutrino backgrounds, and realistic nuclear recoil acceptances. We find that their constraints on the dark neutrino flux may surpass neutrino detectors such as Super-Kamiokande, and that they would extensively probe parametric regions that explain the missing satellites problem in neutrino portal models. The XENON1T and Borexino experiments currently restrict the effective baryonic coupling of thermal boosted dark matter to $\lesssim 10-100 \ \times$ the weak interaction, but DARWIN and ARGO would probe down to couplings 10 times smaller. Detection of boosted dark matter with baryonic couplings $\sim 10^{-3}-10^{-2} \ \times$ the weak coupling could indicate that the dark matter density profile in the centers of galactic halos become cored, rather than cuspy, through annihilations. This work demonstrates that, alongside liquid xenon, liquid argon direct detection technology would emerge a major player in dark matter searches within and beyond the WIMP paradigm.
Highlights
The hunt for the identity of dark matter is a most riveting endeavor
As we will discuss below, the annihilation channel χχ → ννhas been constrained using data from large-volume neutrino detectors [2,9]; we show that DARWIN and ARGO sensitivities would compete with and better them in the ∼10–1000 MeV dark matter mass range
Reference [20] used a LUX dataset with 0.027 tonneyears of exposure to constrain dark neutrinos, but we find that these constraints were weaker than those derived from neutrino experiments in [2,9]; the ∼100–1000 tonneyear tonne-year data sets at DARWIN and ARGO would reverse this hierarchy of bounds
Summary
The hunt for the identity of dark matter is a most riveting endeavor. Particle dark matter may reveal itself in products of its self-annihilations, in target recoils in scattering experiments, or as missing momenta in colliders. As we will discuss below, the annihilation channel χχ → ννhas been constrained using data from large-volume neutrino detectors [2,9]; we show that DARWIN and ARGO sensitivities would compete with and better them in the ∼10–1000 MeV dark matter mass range This is not entirely surprising; while neutrino detectors admit larger fluxes and exposures by construction, noble liquid direct detection experiments enjoy enhanced rates thanks to coherent scattering with large nuclei. When interpreting our constraints in terms of this setup, parametric regions that could potentially explain the “missing satellites” problem of structure formation can be probed extensively In these models the local nonrelativistic population of dark matter itself scatters with nucleons in direct detection experiments; this proceeds through a loop-induced coupling to the Z boson, and the rate is suppressed. We compare these with bounds from scattering on nucleons at XENON1T and BOREXINO, and from other processes at neutrino experiments
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