How high is the neutrino floor?

Bœhm, C.; Cerdeño, D. G.; Machado, P. A. N.; Campo, A. Olivares-Del; Reid, E.

Abstract

In this paper, we compute the contribution to the coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering cross section from new physics models in the neutrino sector. We use this information to calculate the maximum value of the so-called neutrino floor for direct dark matter detection experiments, which determines when these detectors are sensitive to the neutrino background. After including all relevant experimental constraints in different simplified neutrino models, we have found that the neutrino floor can increase by various orders of magnitude in the region of dark matter masses below 10 GeV in the case of scalar mediators, however, this spectacular enhancement is subject to the re-examination of supernovae bounds. The increase is approximately a factor of two for vector mediators. In the light of these results, future claims by direct detection experiments exploring the low-mass window must be carefully examined if a signal is found well above the expected Standard Model neutrino floor.

Citation

Bœhm, C., Cerdeño, D. G., Machado, P. A. N., Campo, A. O.-D., & Reid, E. (2019). How high is the neutrino floor?. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2019(01), Article 043. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2019/01/043

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 9, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 21, 2019
• Publication Date: Jan 21, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 7, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 3, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-7516
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2019
• Issue: 01
• Article Number: 043
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2019/01/043
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1308519