Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 9–12, 2022; New York
Session L09: Dark Matter Direct Detection IIIRecordings Available
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Sponsoring Units: DPF Chair: Knut Dundas Moraa, Columbia University Room: Salon 3 |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 3:45PM - 3:57PM |
L09.00001: Ultra-low energy nuclear recoil calibration in liquid xenon using the MiX detector Samara Steinfeld, Chamindu S Amarasinghe, Maris Arthurs, Ruben L Coronel, Dongqing Huang, Wolfgang B Lorenzon, Richard S Raymond The Michigan Xenon (MiX) system is a small dual-phase time projection chamber at the University of Michigan. It is being adapted to perform measurements of the photon and electron yields of liquid xenon (LXe) in response to low energy nuclear recoils, which will allow LXe experiments to be more sensitive to light dark matter. We plan on bombarding Xe with slow (<~ 1 eV) neutrons. Nuclei that capture these neutrons de-excite with gamma cascades and any asymmetry in a cascade will result in the nucleus recoiling, with a maximum energy of 0.3 keV. Simulations indicate that with a pulsed neutron source and a water tank to moderate the neutrons, the captures can feasibly be isolated in time. In this talk we will present the status of the MiX detector, including hardware upgrades and early performance studies. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 3:57PM - 4:09PM |
L09.00002: Search for Low-energy Electronic Recoil Excess in XENONnT Jingqiang Ye The XENON1T experiment achieved the lowest electronic recoil background among all dark matter experiments, namely 76+-2 events/(t y keV) below 30 keV. An excess of electronic recoils was found below 7 keV and most prominent between 2 and 3 keV. The excess could be explained by solar axions, solar neutrinos with an enhanced magnetic moment, or a trace amount of tritium background which could neither be confirmed nor rejected. The XENONnT experiment, which has replaced XENON1T, features a larger scale time projection chamber with a total of 8.5 tonnes of liquid xenon (LXe), of which 6 tonnes are active. The even lower electronic recoil background expected in XENONnT, due to the LXe self-shielding, the careful material screening and selection, and the effective removal of intrinsic contaminations such as Kr-85 and Rn-222 by cryogenic distillation, will enable more competitive searches for a variety of physics. In particular, XENONnT will be more sensitive in the search for new physics potentially associated with an excess of low-energy electronic recoils, as hinted by XENON1T. In this talk, I will review the excess electronic recoils in XENON1T and present the prospect to decipher the origin of the excess with XENONnT. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:09PM - 4:21PM |
L09.00003: Searching for Planck-mass Dark Matter in XENON1T Shengchao Li Parameter space near the Planck mass (~10$^{19}$GeV/c$^2$) remains relatively unexplored, while many interesting heavy particle dark matter models exist. Multiply-interacting massive particles (MIMPs) are heavy dark matter particles that interact heavily with regular matter but may have evaded detection due to the low number density required to make up the local dark matter halo. These particles could leave track-like signatures in direct detection experiments, like XENON1T. In this talk, I extend the current leading WIMP search result from XENON1T single scatter signal to this high-mass regime for MIMPs search, and present a dedicated analysis to search for multiply scattered MIMP track-like signals in XENON1T data. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:21PM - 4:33PM |
L09.00004: Characterization of nuclear recoils up to 300 keV in xenon using a DT neutron source Teal J Pershing, Jingke Xu, James W Kingston, Eli Mizrachi Xenon Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) continue to be one of the world-leading technologies for Weakly-Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter searches. Canonical WIMP interaction theories predominantly predict lower energy nuclear recoils (<100 keV); however, the absence of any WIMP signal in this energy regime to-date motivates the exploration of new parameter space. One attractive option is to search for higher energy WIMP interaction signatures, such as those in the 100s of keV range predicted by effective field theory models or inelastic scattering channels. Unfortunately, current charge/light yield calibrations for xenon TPCs only reliably extend to around 100 keV nuclear recoils, with large uncertainties beyond this range. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:33PM - 4:45PM |
L09.00005: Signal model calibration and statistic inference for the PandaX-4T WIMP search data Dan Zhang PandaX-4T experiment searches for dark matter particles with a dual-phase time projection chamber holding 4 tonne liquid xenon in the sensitive volume. After the lab and detector construction for more than two years at China Jinping Underground Laboratory, PandaX-4T has begun to take scientific data since the end of the year 2020. This talk covers the signal model calibration of PandaX-4T data based on noble element simulation techniques 2.0 and Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and the profile likelihood ratio analysis with uncertainties in the signal model calibration. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:45PM - 4:57PM |
L09.00006: Detector Modeling and Tuning for WIMP Dark Matter Direct Detection in a Dual-Phase Time-Projection Chamber Greg Rischbieter Dual-Phase Time-Projection Chambers have become the leading technology for WIMP dark matter direct detection experiments. It's crucial that the simulated response of electronic (ER) and nuclear recoils (NR) is properly modeled in order to characterize the expected backgrounds and possible signals. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) and LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiments utilize The Noble Element Simulation Technique (NEST) to produce signal and background models, as NEST provides an efficient and accurate simulation package for modeling energy depositions in liquid and gaseous xenon. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:57PM - 5:09PM |
L09.00007: Modified Thomas-Imel recombination model based on Geant4 simulations Zihao Xu Liquid-xenon time projection chambers (TPCs) are leading the search for dark matter in direct detection experiments. In the active volume of a TPC, interactions between incident particles and xenon atoms yield scintillation photons and ionized electrons, which are used to reconstruct the energy and type of the interaction. Yet these experiments lack a consolidated, fully physics-based model that can characterize their dominant background across their entire energy range of interest. In this talk, I will present a phenomenological modification of the Thomas-Imel model of electron-ion recombination based on GEANT4 track simulations. This new model has a clear physical basis and shows good agreement with data for a much wider energy range than the basic Thomas-Imel model. This model additionally fixes the fluctuation of recombined ions and the dependence on electric field, allowing us to reduce the number of parameters to fit. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 5:09PM - 5:21PM |
L09.00008: DarkSide-20K experiment and its veto Marek Walczak The technical design of the DarkSide-20K experiment has been finalised in Dec 2021. The core of the apparatus is a dual phase Time Projection Chamber with 51.1 tonnes of liquid argon. The detector is designed to observe WIPMs scattering from argon atoms in the target. Scintillation light generated during the interaction is detected by planes of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). The experiment will maintain negligible background level inter alia thanks to its novel neutron veto design. The detector will be constructed in the National Laboratory in Gran Sasso in Italy. |
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