Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The DarkSide-20k TPC and underground argon cryogenic system

  Thomas N. Thorpe on behalf of the DS-20k collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 069 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) will exploit the physical and chemical properties of liquid argon (LAr) housed within a large dual-phase time project chamber (TPC) in its direct search for dark matter. The TPC will utilize a compact, integrated design with many novel features to enable the 20t fiducial volume of underground argon. Underground Argon (UAr) is sourced from underground CO$_2$ wells and depleted in the radioactive isotope $^{39}$Ar, greatly enhancing the experimental sensitivity to dark matter interactions. Sourcing and transporting the $\mathcal{O}$(100t) of UAr for (DS-20k) is costly, and a dedicated single-closed-loop cryogenic system has been designed, constructed, and tested to handle the valuable UAr. We present an overview of the (DS-20k) TPC design and the first results from the UAr cryogenic system.

  3 citations

• Reference measurements for indirect dark matter searches with p+C collisions at the NA61/SHINE experiment

  Michał Naskręt on behalf of the NA61/SHINE Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 068 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  NA61/SHINE is a large-acceptance fixed-target experiment located at the CERN SPS, which studies final hadronic states in interactions of various particles and nuclei. It is unique in terms of providing data on a variety of collision systems at different collision energies. This allows for wide deuteron, antiproton and antideuteron production cross-section studies. The latter are currently considered a possible dark matter interaction signal with exceptionally small background. The measurements on carbon targets are important to reduce systematic experimental effects due to experiment-internal antideuteron production, as the most abundant element in the path of an incoming particle for the AMS-02 experiment is carbon. This manuscript will focus on analysis of NA61/SHINE data on p+C thin target collisions in the context of light (anti)nuclei production. A preliminary analysis of experimental data and the particle identification method as well as current deuteron and antideuteron yields will be described.

• What charged cosmic rays tell us on dark matter

  Pierre Salati

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 067 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Dark matter particles could be the major component of the haloes of galaxies. Their mutual annihilations or decays would produce an indirect signature under the form of high-energy cosmic-rays. The focus of this presentation is on antimatter species, a component so rare that any excess over the background should be easily detected. After a recap on Galactic propagation, I will discuss positrons, antiprotons and anti-nuclei. For each of these species, anomalies have been reported. The antiproton excess, for instance, is currently a hot topic. Alas, it does not resist a correct treatment of theoretical and data errors.

• First measurement results from DANAE - Demonstrating DePFET RNDR on a prototype Matrix

  Alexander Bähr, Holger Kluck, Peter Lechner, Jelena Ninkovic, Jochen Schiek, Hexi Shi, Wolfgang Treberspurg, Johannes Treis

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 066 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the search for dark matter particle candidates, the mass region below 1 GeV/c$^2$ is relatively unprobed. Utilizing a low-noise silicon sensor as a sensitive target material, we aim to study the event signature of recoils between dark matter candidates and bound electrons. As the deposited energy is only a few eV, a sensor capable of detecting these low signals is required. We present first measurements on a prototype pixel matrix. It is based on the RNDR DePFET principle and provides a deep sub-electron readout noise of 0.2e$^-$ and below.

  1 citation

• Disentangling sub-GeV dark matter from the diffuse supernova neutrino background using Hyper-Kamiokande

  Sandra Robles

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 065 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The upcoming Hyper-Kamiokande (HyperK) experiment is expected to detect the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB). This requires to ponder all possible sources of background. Sub-GeV dark matter (DM) which annihilates into neutrinos is a potential background that has not been considered so far. We simulate DSNB and DM signals, as well as backgrounds in the HyperK detector. We find that DM-induced neutrinos could indeed alter the extraction of the correct values of the parameters of interest for DSNB physics. Since the DSNB is an isotropic signal, and DM originates primarily from the Galactic centre, we show that this effect could be alleviated with an on-off analysis.

  1 citation

• ELOISE - Reliable background simulation at sub-keV energies

  Holger Kluck

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 064 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  CaWO$_4$ and Al$_2$O$_3$ are well-established target materials used by experiments searching for rare events like the elastic scattering off of a hypothetical Dark Matter particle. In recent years, experiments have reached detection thresholds for nuclear recoils at the 10 eV-scale. At this energy scale, a reliable Monte Carlo simulation of the expected background is crucial. However, none of the publicly available general-purpose simulation packages are validated at this energy scale and for these targets. The recently started ELOISE project aims to provide reliable simulations of electromagnetic particle interactions for this use case by obtaining experimental reference data, validating the simulation code against them, and, if needed, calibrating the code to the reference data.

• Influence of Geant4 physics list on simulation accuracy and performance

  Róbert Breier, Alexander Fuss, Holger Kluck, Valentyna Mokina, Veronika Palušová, Pavel Povinec

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 063 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A main goal of current low background physics is the search for rare and novel phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, e.g. the scattering off of a potential Dark Matter particle inside a CaWO$_4$ crystal or the neutrinoless double beta decay of Ge nucleus. The success of such searches depends on a reliable background prediction via Monte Carlo simulations. A widely used toolkit to construct these simulations is GEANT4, which offers a wide choice of physics models, so-called physics lists. To facilitate the selection of physics lists for simulations of CaWO$_4$ and Ge targets, we quantify their impact on the total energy deposition for several test cases.

• Impact of nuclear structure from shell model calculations on nuclear responses to WIMP elastic scattering for $^{19}$F and $^{nat}$Xe targets

  Raghda Abdel Khaleq, Cedric Simenel, Andrew E. Stuchbery

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 062 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Non-relativistic effective field theory (NREFT) is one approach used for describing the interaction of WIMPs with ordinary matter. Among other factors, these interactions are expected to be affected by the structure of the atomic nuclei in the target. The sensitivity of the nuclear response components of the WIMP-nucleus scattering amplitude is investigated using shell model calculations for $^{19}$F and $^{nat}$Xe. Resulting integrated nuclear response values are shown to be sensitive to some specifics of the nuclear structure calculations.

  1 citation

• Photomultiplier characterisation and its impact on background for SABRE South

  William J. D. Melbourne, Owen Stanley, Phillip Urquijo, Madeleine J. Zurowski

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 061 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  SABRE (Sodium iodide with Active Background REjection) South is a NaI(Tl) based dark matter direct detection experiment located at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) [J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2156, 012064 (2021), arXiv:2205.13849]. It is designed to detect an annual modulation of WIMP recoils as an independent replication of the long-standing DAMA/LIBRA modulation signal. SABRE South will have a low energy threshold of 1 keV in the NaI(Tl) crystal detector and a low experimental background. This requires precise characterisation of the photomultipliers used to understand both their sensitivity at low thresholds and their contribution to the background. We report on the photomultiplier characterisation test bench developed for the crystal detector photomultipliers including studies of the single photon response, transit time, and dark noise. A specific focus is on estimating the contribution to the experimental background of coincident photomultiplier noise due to its predominance at low energy and inability to be modelled using traditional MC simulation.

  1 citation

• Self-similar solutions for fuzzy dark matter

  Raquel Galazo-Garcia, Philippe Brax, Patrick Valageas

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 060 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Self-similar solutions for fuzzy dark matter are very different from their counterparts in the standard cold dark matter model. In contrast to the familiar hierarchical collapse of the current model for structure formation, they correspond to an inverse hierarchical blow-up. This fact highlights the gravitational cooling process, which in the absence of dissipation, allows the system to eject excess energy through the intermittent expulsion of clumps of matter. These surprising behaviours are due to the wave properties of the Schrödinger equation and to the quantum pressure. These features are printed in the Eulerian density-velocity representation of the nonrelativistic scalar field, or in the Lagrangian representation in the mass-shell trajectories.