Abstract
We show that underground experiments like LUX/LZ, PandaX-II, XENON, and PICO could discover dark matter up to the Planck mass and beyond, with new searches for dark matter that scatters multiple times in these detectors. This opens up significant discovery potential via reanalysis of existing and future data. We also identify a new effect that substantially enhances experimental sensitivity to large dark matter scattering cross sections: while passing through atmospheric or solid overburden, there is a maximum number of scatters that dark matter undergoes, determined by the total number of scattering sites it passes, such as nuclei and electrons. For dark matter heavier than $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{15}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$, this extends the reach of some published limits and future analyses to exclude large dark matter scattering cross sections, using detectors two kilometers underground.
Highlights
While the presence of dark matter has been inferred from astrophysical and cosmological data, its nature remains enigmatic
Dark matter searches in the last few decades have sought out weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which scatter at most once as they pass through underground detectors
We show how ongoing underground experiments could find dark matter that scatters multiple times as it travels through these detectors
Summary
While the presence of dark matter has been inferred from astrophysical and cosmological data, its nature remains enigmatic. We show how ongoing underground experiments could find dark matter that scatters multiple times as it travels through these detectors. We refer to these multiply interacting particles as MIMPs. We show that a hitherto-neglected effect in dark matter studies, saturated overburden scattering (SOS), enhances published and prospective sensitivities to large scattering cross sections. The discovery of superheavy particles may provide the first evidence for supersymmetry, grand unified theories, and new particle dynamics prior to big bang nucleosynthesis. This motivates the search for these particles in current and future experiments.
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