New Search for Dark Matter with Neutrons at Neutrino Detectors
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| _version_ | 1866909309220159488 |
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| author | Choi, Koun Park, Jong-Chul |
| author_facet | Choi, Koun Park, Jong-Chul |
| contents | Large-volume neutrino experiments are ideal for testing boosted dark matter (BDM) scenarios. We propose, for the first time, an approach to utilize knockout neutrons by detecting de-excitation $γ$ rays and coincident captured neutrons from dark-matter interactions with bound neutrons in oxygen, while previous studies have focused on knockout-protons and electrons. This method is especially crucial for water Čerenkov detectors, where high proton Čerenkov threshold ($\sim$1 GeV) suppresses signal acceptance. Recently, Super-Kamiokande (SK) was doped with 0.03\% gadolinium (SK-Gd) to enhance neutron tagging efficiency. Using SK-Gd as a target experiment, we demonstrate that this method increases sensitivity to BDM models by an order of magnitude compared to proton-based analysis, and it allows exploration of a wider range of light dark-matter models previously inaccessible with proton-based analysis. We also present the projected sensitivity for the upcoming Hyper-Kamiokande detector. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_05646 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | New Search for Dark Matter with Neutrons at Neutrino Detectors Choi, Koun Park, Jong-Chul High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment Large-volume neutrino experiments are ideal for testing boosted dark matter (BDM) scenarios. We propose, for the first time, an approach to utilize knockout neutrons by detecting de-excitation $γ$ rays and coincident captured neutrons from dark-matter interactions with bound neutrons in oxygen, while previous studies have focused on knockout-protons and electrons. This method is especially crucial for water Čerenkov detectors, where high proton Čerenkov threshold ($\sim$1 GeV) suppresses signal acceptance. Recently, Super-Kamiokande (SK) was doped with 0.03\% gadolinium (SK-Gd) to enhance neutron tagging efficiency. Using SK-Gd as a target experiment, we demonstrate that this method increases sensitivity to BDM models by an order of magnitude compared to proton-based analysis, and it allows exploration of a wider range of light dark-matter models previously inaccessible with proton-based analysis. We also present the projected sensitivity for the upcoming Hyper-Kamiokande detector. |
| title | New Search for Dark Matter with Neutrons at Neutrino Detectors |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.05646 |