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Detecting Light Dark Matter via Inelastic Cosmic Ray Collisions.
James Alvey1, Miguel D Campos1, Malcolm Fairbairn1
1Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology Group, Physics Department, King's College London, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom.
Physical Review Letters
|January 18, 2020
Summary
Direct detection experiments struggle with sub-GeV dark matter. A novel cosmic ray production mechanism offers new sensitivity, potentially dominating over standard relic dark matter signals.
Area of Science:
- Particle Physics
- Astrophysics
- Cosmology
Background:
- Direct detection experiments for sub-GeV dark matter face sensitivity limitations due to low galactic dark matter velocities.
- Alternative dark matter flux sources with higher momenta are needed to recover sensitivity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate a novel dark matter production mechanism via inelastic cosmic ray collisions.
- To estimate the resulting dark matter flux and its impact on direct detection limits.
Main Methods:
- Computed dark matter production from mesons generated in inelastic cosmic ray-nucleus collisions (cosmic beam dump).
- Estimated potential limits on dark matter properties using data from XENON1T and Large Underground Xenon (LZ) experiments.
Main Results:
- The dark matter flux from inelastic cosmic rays can exceed the flux from elastic scattering of relic dark matter.
- Derived limits for hadrophilic scalar mediator models are competitive with existing constraints from MiniBooNE for MeV-scale mediators.
Conclusions:
- Inelastic cosmic ray collisions provide a viable and potentially dominant source for light dark matter detection.
- This mechanism opens new avenues for probing MeV-scale dark matter and hadrophilic mediators.
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