TY - JOUR
T1 - Fueling the search for light dark matter-electron scattering with spherical proportional counters
AU - McCabe, Christopher
AU - Hamaide, Louis
N1 - Funding Information:
We are particularly indebted to Kostas Nikolopoulos, Ioannis Katsioulas, Patrick Knights, and Jack Matthews for discussions about the d ark s phere detector and for providing the simulated background rates in the Boulby Underground Laboratory; George Booth and Robert Anderson for help with running p y scf and for lending us books on quantum chemistry; Peter Cox, Matthew Dolan, and Harry Quiney for discussions on atomic and molecular physics; and Thomas Edwards for comments on the manuscript. L. H. is supported by the Cromwell Scholarship at King’s College London. C. M. is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Grants No. ST/N004663/1 and No. ST/T000759/1.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
PY - 2023/3/15
Y1 - 2023/3/15
N2 - Dark matter (DM) detectors employing a spherical proportional counter (SPC) have demonstrated a single-electron detection threshold and are projected to have small background rates. We explore the sensitivity to DM-electron scattering with SPC detectors in the context of DarkSphere, a proposal for a 300 cm diameter fully electroformed SPC. SPCs can run with different gases, so we investigate the sensitivity for five targets: helium, neon, xenon, methane, and isobutane. We use tools from quantum chemistry to model the atomic and molecular systems and calculate the expected DM induced event rates. We find that DarkSphere has the potential to improve current exclusion limits on DM masses above 4 MeV by up to 5 orders of magnitude. Neon is the best all-round gas target and provides good sensitivity to scenarios with both light and heavy mediators. Gas mixtures, where methane or isobutane is added to a noble gas, can extend the sensitivity at lower masses. Our study highlights the currently untapped potential of SPCs to search for DM-electron scattering in the MeV-to-GeV DM mass range.
AB - Dark matter (DM) detectors employing a spherical proportional counter (SPC) have demonstrated a single-electron detection threshold and are projected to have small background rates. We explore the sensitivity to DM-electron scattering with SPC detectors in the context of DarkSphere, a proposal for a 300 cm diameter fully electroformed SPC. SPCs can run with different gases, so we investigate the sensitivity for five targets: helium, neon, xenon, methane, and isobutane. We use tools from quantum chemistry to model the atomic and molecular systems and calculate the expected DM induced event rates. We find that DarkSphere has the potential to improve current exclusion limits on DM masses above 4 MeV by up to 5 orders of magnitude. Neon is the best all-round gas target and provides good sensitivity to scenarios with both light and heavy mediators. Gas mixtures, where methane or isobutane is added to a noble gas, can extend the sensitivity at lower masses. Our study highlights the currently untapped potential of SPCs to search for DM-electron scattering in the MeV-to-GeV DM mass range.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85150873840&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.107.063002
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.107.063002
M3 - Article
VL - 107
JO - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
JF - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
IS - 6
M1 - 063002
ER -