Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2021 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 66, Number 8
Monday–Thursday, October 11–14, 2021; Virtual; Eastern Daylight Time
Session QL: BSM Searches in Fundamental Symmetries X: Dark Matter |
Hide Abstracts |
Chair: Alexander Friedland, SLAC Room: Georgian |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 11:30AM - 11:42AM |
QL.00001: A Novel Search for Ultralight Dark Matter Using the Breakthrough Listen Public Data Release from the Green Bank Telescope Karl A van Bibber, Aya Keller, Sean O'Brien, Adyant M Kamdar, Alexander F Leder While significant attention has been paid to a few specific dark matter candidates such as the WIMP and axion, in fact the nature and mass of dark matter is poorly constrained, and thus a broad observational strategy may prove helpful toward its ultimate identification. We have developed a novel model-independent approach which utilizes the recent Breakthrough Listen public data release of three years of observation by the Green Bank Telescope to execute a broad search for ultralight dark matter within our galactic halo. This method assumes only a quasi-monochromatic radio line from decay or annihilation of the dark matter, and additionally that the line exhibits a Doppler shift with position according to the solar motion through a static galactic halo. This approach has been tested on a subset of L-band data, and the analysis of the full L-, S-, C- and X-band dataset (25,000 spectra, 1.1–11.6 GHz) is currently underway. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 11:42AM - 11:54AM |
QL.00002: Search for Dark Photons Utilizing Advanced Germanium Detectors Sanjay Bhattarai, Dongming Mei We prospect the possibility of using advanced germanium (Ge) detectors to search for dark photons by means of absorption and conversion to electrons. A Ge detector utilizing internal charge amplification for the charge carriers created by the ionization of impurities is a novel technology with experimental sensitivity for detecting dark photons. We present the sensitivity of such a Ge experiment for detecting dark photons in the low-energy region. We show that, if Ge internal charge amplification technology becomes available, then a new opportunity arises to observe dark photons. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 11:54AM - 12:06PM |
QL.00003: Event rate analysis in the DEAP-3600 dark matter experiment Gurpreet Kaur DEAP-3600 is a single-phase dark matter detection experiment using liquid argon as the target material to search for the nuclear recoil signal from the elastic interaction of dark matter candidates, WIMPs, with argon nuclei. Dark matter theories also predict the modulation in the nuclear recoil signal with time due to the rotation of the sun and hence earth around the center of the galaxy. Backgrounds in the experiment are not expected to show this kind of modulation; thus, the observation of this type of modulation signal will extend the sensitivity of the WIMP search in the experiment. To obtain sensitivity to this modulation signal requires a very good calibration and study of systematics. The study of event rates for 39Ar decays with time will also give a precise measurement for the lifetime of the isotope. The detector stability parameters from the physics data of DEAP-3600 show excellent stability which makes it ideal for these studies. In this talk, the detector stability of DEAP-3600 and some preliminary calculations on the 39Ar lifetime measurement will be presented. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:06PM - 12:18PM |
QL.00004: Gravitational search for near-Earth primordial black holes or other compact dark objects Tomoyo Namigata, Charles J Horowitz, Rudolf Widmer-Schnidrig Dark matter has been a mysterious entity, escaping detection and remaining hidden from all who seek it. What is known is that it weakly interacts with gravity. Here, we search for dark matter objects in the form of potential primordial black holes orbiting the earth using measurements of local gravitational acceleration. There have been similar searches for dark matter orbiting within the inner core of the Earth. Using about 10 years of data from the superconducting gravimeter located in the Black Forest Observatory (in Southwest Germany) and Djougou Station (in West Africa), we analyze and define an upper limit for the maximum mass for such PBHs orbiting Earth. This was done by accounting for factors such as the composition and quadrupole moment of the Earth, the Earth's moon Luna, and noise and atmospheric effects on the gravimeter and running simulations for different types of orbits (variable inclination angles and eccentricities) for potential PBHs. The excluded mass for any such Earth-orbiting PBHs was 1017g or larger for orbits of semimajor axes within two Earth radii. As the lower and upper bound for the masses are constrained by Hawking radiation (<1017g) and microlensing (>1022g), in this study, we conclude that near-Earth PBHs are highly unlikely. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:18PM - 12:30PM |
QL.00005: A fast and accessible program for computing WIMP-nucleus scattering event rates Oliver C Gorton, Calvin W Johnson, Changfeng Jiao Astronomical observations indirectly suggest a large fraction of the matter in the universe is nonbaryonic and weakly interacting. This has prompted numerous and ongoing experimental efforts to directly detect the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS). Recent work using an effective field framework has shown a larger number of couplings between nucleons and WIMPs than previously appreciated. While a Mathematica script to compute the nuclear target response exists, exploration of these possibilities is hampered by the size of the parameter space and the relatively high cost of computation in Mathematica. To address the large number of targets and couplings, we have developed a fast Fortran 90 code with a user-friendly Python wrapper, that can swiftly and efficiently explore the parameter space at rates between 100 and 1000 times faster than before. I cover the basics of implementation and demonstrate a practical use-case. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:30PM - 12:42PM |
QL.00006: Search for MeV-scale Energy Deposits from Dark Matter in Liquid Xenon using EXO-200 Ako Jamil Laboratory searches for dark matter typically look for nuclear recoil signals in the keV range, leaving the energy range above 1 MeV mostly unexplored. New models of dark matter that are widely compatible with astrophysical and cosmological constraints have been proposed in which the primary interactions of dark matter in detectors would produce MeV-scale energy deposits. The EXO-200 experiment, which is a 200 kg liquid xenon time projection chamber primarily focused on the search for neutrinoless double decay of Xe-136, is well suited for searching for dark matter interactions in the region between 1-10 MeV. This talk will present the expected signal topology, reconstruction and analysis for such dark matter models. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:42PM - 12:54PM |
QL.00007: Search for Low Energy Beyond Standard Model Rare Events with the Majorana Demonstrator Clint Wiseman, Inwook Kim The Majorana Demonstrator searches for rare events from beyond Standard Model physics in the energy region of 1--100 keV in parallel with its search for neutrinoless double beta decay, with an array of HPGe detectors enriched in 76Ge. Since the first release of low-energy results with 1.3 kg-y of commissioning data, the Demonstrator has collected roughly 50 kg-y of exposure. Many technical improvements to the low energy analysis have been implemented, including pulse shape discrimination, data cleaning, and improved energy threshold estimation. This improved noise event rejection allows searches for peak-like and extended signals from rare events such as bosonic dark matter, wavefunction collapse, solar axions, and more. In this talk we present our latest results for the BSM physics search of the Majorana Demonstrator. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:54PM - 1:06PM |
QL.00008: Optimization of the low energy spectrum in CUORE Rebecca E Kowalski The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is a ton-scale bolometer located at Gran Sasso National Laboratories in Assergi, Italy. To date, CUORE has collected over 1000 kg yr of exposure. The energy spectrum of CUORE is typically optimized to search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of Te-130. To utilize the entire available energy spectrum, we can optimize the selection of usable physics events at lower energies to improve sensitivity for analyses with signals at energies of less than 40 keV. We build upon techniques developed by CUORE-0 for application to the larger dataset provided by CUORE, as well as study alternate methods in an attempt to improve sensitivity in this low energy regime. These studies are done on both real and simulated data, in an effort to improve our understanding of this mostly unanalyzed region of the energy spectrum, with the goal of exploring this energy region of the spectrum in a search for dark matter candidates. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 1:06PM - 1:18PM |
QL.00009: Measuring Entanglement of Electron-Positron Annihilation Gammas Using Circular Polarization Analyzers Daniel Lutes, Gabe Otero Munoz, William Bultman, Endo Shunsuke, William Michael Snow The gamma rays from electron-positron annihilation are in an entangled state. The associated quantum contextuality inequality for this system was measured using the polarization dependence of Compton scattering for the two correlated gammas [1]. It has been argued that this measurement does not constitute a true Bell inequality test since the measured observables commute [2]. We present a version of this experiment which employs circular polarization analyzers to avoid this loophole. We also observe that the original version of this experiment involving linear polarization is now well-suited for a senior physics undergraduate lab involving quantum entanglement [3]. |
Thursday, October 14, 2021 1:18PM - 1:30PM |
QL.00010: Abstract Withdrawn |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700