Semiconductor Probes of Light Dark Matter

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Abstract

Dark matter with mass below about a GeV is essentially unobservable in conventional direct detection experiments. However, newly proposed technology will allow the detection of single electron events in semiconductor materials with significantly lowered thresholds. This would allow detection of dark matter as light as an MeV in mass. Compared to other detection technologies, semiconductors allow enhanced sensitivity because of their low ionization energy around an eV. Such detectors would be particularly sensitive to dark matter with electric and magnetic dipole moments, with a reach many orders of magnitude beyond current bounds. Observable dipole moment interactions can be generated by new particles with masses as great as 1000 TeV, providing a window to scales beyond the reach of current colliders.

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A Unified Approach to the Classical Statistical Analysis of Small Signals

Gary Feldman, Robert D. Cousins (1997)

We give a classical confidence belt construction which unifies the treatment of upper confidence limits for null results and two-sided confidence intervals for non-null results. The unified treatment solves a problem (apparently not previously recognized) that the choice of upper limit or two-sided intervals leads to intervals which are not confidence intervals if the choice is based on the data. We apply the construction to two related problems which have recently been a battle-ground between classical and Bayesian statistics: Poisson processes with background, and Gaussian errors with a bounded physical region. In contrast with the usual classical construction for upper limits, our construction avoids unphysical confidence intervals. In contrast with some popular Bayesian intervals, our intervals eliminate conservatism (frequentist coverage greater than the stated confidence) in the Gaussian case and reduce it to a level dictated by discreteness in the Poisson case. We generalize the method in order to apply it to analysis of experiments searching for neutrino oscillations. We show that this technique both gives correct coverage and is powerful, while other classical techniques that have been used by neutrino oscillation search experiments fail one or both of these criteria.

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A Theory of Dark Matter

Tracy Slatyer, Douglas P. Finkbeiner, Nima Arkani-Hamed … (2008)

We propose a comprehensive theory of dark matter that explains the recent proliferation of unexpected observations in high-energy astrophysics. Cosmic ray spectra from ATIC and PAMELA require a WIMP with mass M_chi ~ 500 - 800 GeV that annihilates into leptons at a level well above that expected from a thermal relic. Signals from WMAP and EGRET reinforce this interpretation. Taken together, we argue these facts imply the presence of a GeV-scale new force in the dark sector. The long range allows a Sommerfeld enhancement to boost the annihilation cross section as required, without altering the weak scale annihilation cross section during dark matter freezeout in the early universe. If the dark matter annihilates into the new force carrier, phi, its low mass can force it to decay dominantly into leptons. If the force carrier is a non-Abelian gauge boson, the dark matter is part of a multiplet of states, and splittings between these states are naturally generated with size alpha m_phi ~ MeV, leading to the eXciting dark matter (XDM) scenario previously proposed to explain the positron annihilation in the galactic center observed by the INTEGRAL satellite. Somewhat smaller splittings would also be expected, providing a natural source for the parameters of the inelastic dark matter (iDM) explanation for the DAMA annual modulation signal. Since the Sommerfeld enhancement is most significant at low velocities, early dark matter halos at redshift ~10 potentially produce observable effects on the ionization history of the universe, and substructure is more detectable than with a conventional WIMP. Moreover, the low velocity dispersion of dwarf galaxies and Milky Way subhalos can greatly increase the substructure annihilation signal.

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Technocosmology — could a technibaryon excess provide a “natural” missing mass candidate?

S. Nussinov (1985)

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Publication date Created: 12 March 2012

Publication date Updated: 2012-11-12

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DOI: 10.1016/j.dark.2012.09.001

ArXiV ID: 1203.2531

SO-VID: ced88cf3-f86c-446e-95d8-6940f784d92c

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http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

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Journal reference Physics of the Dark Universe 1 (2012) 32-49

Comments 26 pages, 6 figures, references added, error in mass contribution corrected, discussion of constraints expanded and clarified, plot of mass range sensitivity expanded

Semiconductor Probes of Light Dark Matter

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Claudins

Most cited references 24

A Unified Approach to the Classical Statistical Analysis of Small Signals

A Theory of Dark Matter

Technocosmology — could a technibaryon excess provide a “natural” missing mass candidate?

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