Non-standard interactions of solar neutrinos in dark matter experiments

Abstract

We show that non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) can be probed in future direct dark matter detection experiments through both elastic neutrino-electron scattering and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering. We show NSI can increase the event rate due to solar neutrinos, with a sharp increase for lower nuclear recoil energy thresholds. We also identify an interference range of NSI parameters for which the rate is reduced by approximately 40%. Finally, we show that the “dark side” solution for the solar neutrino mixing angle may be discovered at forthcoming experiments.