Abstract
Dark matter is a well-established theoretical addition to the Standard Model supported by many observations in modern astrophysics and cosmology. In this context, the existence of weakly interacting massive particles represents an appealing solution to the observed thermal relic in the Universe. Indeed, a large experimental campaign is ongoing for the detection of such particles in the sub-GeV mass range. Adopting the benchmark scenario for light dark matter particles produced in the decay of a dark photon, with αD = 0.1 and mA′ = 3mχ, we study the potential of the SHiP experiment to detect such elusive particles through its Scattering and Neutrino detector (SND). In its 5-years run, corresponding to 2 · 1020 protons on target from the CERN SPS, we find that SHiP will improve the current limits in the mass range for the dark matter from about 1 MeV to 300 MeV. In particular, we show that SHiP will probe the thermal target for Majorana candidates in most of this mass window and even reach the Pseudo-Dirac thermal relic.
Highlights
Background estimateNeutrinos emerging from the beam-dump target and interacting in the Scattering and Neutrino detector (SND) are the relevant background source to the detection of LDM elastic scattering, whenever the topology at the primary vertex consists of a single outgoing charged track, an electron
Adopting the benchmark scenario for light dark matter particles produced in the decay of a dark photon, with αD = 0.1 and mA = 3mχ, we study the potential of the Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) experiment to detect such elusive particles through its Scattering and Neutrino detector (SND)
Light dark matter particles χ with masses in the sub-GeV region represent an appealing scenario for the explanation of the observed thermal relic density in the Universe
Summary
Thermal freeze-out can naturally explain the origin of the DM relic density for a sub-GeV particle provided the interaction with the visible sector is mediated by a new light force carrier [2, 29]. In case χ is DM, precise measurements of the temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation significantly constrain the parameter space. They rule out Dirac fermions with mass below 10 GeV as a thermal DM candidate and more in general every DM candidate that acquires its relic abundance via s-wave annihilation into SM particles [31, 32]. Tighter bounds come instead from the Planck measurement of the effective number of neutrino species Neff [32] and rule out the minimal DP model considered here if the complex scalar is lighter than 9 MeV [33]. Where v is the relative velocity between the colliding DM particles
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