Abstract
We report the results of a search for the inelastic scattering of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the XENON1T dark matter experiment. Scattering off $^{129}$Xe is the most sensitive probe of inelastic WIMP interactions, with a signature of a 39.6 keV de-excitation photon detected simultaneously with the nuclear recoil. Using an exposure of 0.89 tonne-years, we find no evidence of inelastic WIMP scattering with a significance of more than 2$\sigma$. A profile-likelihood ratio analysis is used to set upper limits on the cross-section of WIMP-nucleus interactions. We exclude new parameter space for WIMPs heavier than 100 GeV/c${}^2$, with the strongest upper limit of $3.3 \times 10^{-39}$ cm${}^2$ for 130 GeV/c${}^2$ WIMPs at 90\% confidence level.
Highlights
A wealth of astrophysical and cosmological evidence points toward the existence of dark matter [1,2]
We report the results of a search for the inelastic scattering of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the XENON1T dark matter experiment
We present a search for the inelastic scattering of WIMPs off nuclei in the XENON1T experiment [8]
Summary
A wealth of astrophysical and cosmological evidence points toward the existence of dark matter [1,2]. The main focus of direct detection searches is usually the elastic scattering of WIMP dark matter off target nuclei, aiming to detect the Oð10 keVÞ recoiling nucleus [9,10,11,12]. Because the first excited 1=2þ state lies 80.2 keV above the 3=2þ ground state (half-life of 0.48 ns) [16], this channel is suppressed and not considered in this analysis [17] Direct detection experiments such as XENON1T tend to focus on searches for elastic WIMP scattering, where they have the highest sensitivity to most interaction models. This is due to their ability to discriminate nuclear recoil (NR) WIMP signals from electronic recoils (ERs), which constitute the majority of the backgrounds. There are some interaction models for which the inelastic channel is more sensitive [18]
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