Abstract
Direct detection dark matter experiments looking for WIMP-nucleus elastic scattering will soon be sensitive to an irreducible background from neutrinos which will drastically affect their discovery potential. Here we explore how the neutrino background will affect future ton-scale experiments considering both spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions. We show that combining data from experiments using different targets can improve the dark matter discovery potential due to target complementarity. We find that in the context of spin-dependent interactions, combining results from several targets can greatly enhance the subtraction of the neutrino background for WIMP masses below and therefore probe dark matter models to lower cross sections. In the context of target complementarity, we also explore how one can tune the relative exposures of different target materials to optimize the WIMP discovery potential.
5 More- Received 15 August 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.083510
© 2014 American Physical Society
Synopsis
Discriminating Dark Matter from Neutrinos
Published 7 October 2014
Neutrinos could be mistaken for dark matter by certain types of detectors, so researchers are outlining ways to differentiate the two signals.
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