Search for Daily Modulation of MeV Dark Matter Signals with DAMIC-M.

I Arnquist, N Avalos, D Baxter, X Bertou, N Castelló-Mor, A E Chavarria, J Cuevas-Zepeda, A Dastgheibi-Fard, C De Dominicis, O Deligny, J Duarte-Campderros, E Estrada, N Gadola, R Gaïor, T Hossbach, L Iddir, B J Kavanagh, B Kilminster, A Lantero-Barreda, I Lawson, S Lee, A Letessier-Selvon, P Loaiza, A Lopez-Virto, K J McGuire, P Mitra, S Munagavalasa, D Norcini, S Paul, A Piers, P Privitera, P Robmann, S Scorza, M Settimo, R Smida, M Traina, R Vilar, G Warot, R Yajur, J-P Zopounidis, DAMIC-M Collaboration

Physical review letters 2024 Mar 08

filter terms:

Dark matter (DM) particles with sufficiently large cross sections may scatter as they travel through Earth's bulk. The corresponding changes in the DM flux give rise to a characteristic daily modulation signal in detectors sensitive to DM-electron interactions. Here, we report results obtained from the first underground operation of the DAMIC-M prototype detector searching for such a signal from DM with MeV-scale mass. A model-independent analysis finds no modulation in the rate of 1 e^{-} events with sidereal period, where a DM signal would appear. We then use these data to place exclusion limits on DM in the mass range [0.53,2.7] MeV/c^{2} interacting with electrons via a dark photon mediator. Taking advantage of the time-dependent signal we improve by ∼2 orders of magnitude on our previous limit obtained from the total rate of 1 e^{-} events, using the same dataset. This daily modulation search represents the current strongest limit on DM-electron scattering via ultralight mediators for DM masses around 1 MeV/c^{2}.

Citation

PMID: 38518351

View Full Text