Physics from solar neutrinos in dark matter direct detection experiments

Cerdeño, David G.; Fairbairn, Malcolm; Jubb, Thomas; Machado, Pedro; Vincent, Aaron; Boehm, Céline

Abstract

The next generation of dark matter direct detection experiments will be sensitive to both coherent neutrino-nucleus and neutrino-electron scattering. This will enable them to explore aspects of solar physics, perform the lowest energy measurement of the weak angle to date, and probe contributions from new theories with light mediators. In this article, we compute the projected nuclear and electron recoil rates expected in several dark matter direct detection experiments due to solar neutrinos, and use these estimates to quantify errors on future measurements of the neutrino fluxes, weak mixing angle and solar observables, as well as to constrain new physics in the neutrino sector. Our analysis shows that the combined rates of solar neutrino events in second generation experiments (SuperCDMS and LZ) can yield a measurement of the pp flux to 2.5% accuracy via electron recoil, and slightly improve the 8B flux determination. Assuming a low-mass argon phase, projected tonne-scale experiments like DARWIN can reduce the uncertainty on both the pp and boron-8 neutrino fluxes to below 1%. Finally, we use current results from LUX, SuperCDMS and CDMSlite to set bounds on new interactions between neutrinos and electrons or nuclei, and show that future direct detection experiments can be used to set complementary constraints on the parameter space associated with light mediators.

Citation

Cerdeño, D. G., Fairbairn, M., Jubb, T., Machado, P., Vincent, A., & Boehm, C. (2016). Physics from solar neutrinos in dark matter direct detection experiments. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016(5), Article 118. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep05%282016%29118

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 9, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2016
• Publication Date: May 20, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 7, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 7, 2016
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2016
• Issue: 5
• Article Number: 118
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep05%282016%29118
• Related Public URLs: http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01025