• Open Access

Direct detection of dark energy: The XENON1T excess and future prospects

Sunny Vagnozzi, Luca Visinelli, Philippe Brax, Anne-Christine Davis, and Jeremy Sakstein
Phys. Rev. D 104, 063023 – Published 15 September 2021

Abstract

We explore the prospects for direct detection of dark energy by current and upcoming terrestrial dark matter direct detection experiments. If dark energy is driven by a new light degree of freedom coupled to matter and photons then dark energy quanta are predicted to be produced in the Sun. These quanta free-stream toward Earth where they can interact with Standard Model particles in the detection chambers of direct detection experiments, presenting the possibility that these experiments could be used to test dark energy. Screening mechanisms, which suppress fifth forces associated with new light particles, and are a necessary feature of many dark energy models, prevent production processes from occurring in the core of the Sun, and similarly, in the cores of red giant, horizontal branch, and white dwarf stars. Instead, the coupling of dark energy to photons leads to production in the strong magnetic field of the solar tachocline via a mechanism analogous to the Primakoff process. This then allows for detectable signals on Earth while evading the strong constraints that would typically result from stellar probes of new light particles. As an example, we examine whether the electron recoil excess recently reported by the XENON1T collaboration can be explained by chameleon-screened dark energy, and find that such a model is preferred over the background-only hypothesis at the 2.0σ level, in a large range of parameter space not excluded by stellar (or other) probes. This raises the tantalizing possibility that XENON1T may have achieved the first direct detection of dark energy. Finally, we study the prospects for confirming this scenario using planned future detectors such as XENONnT, PandaX-4T, and LUX-ZEPLIN.

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  • Received 7 April 2021
  • Accepted 20 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.063023

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Sunny Vagnozzi1,2,*,¶, Luca Visinelli3,4,5,†,¶, Philippe Brax6,‡, Anne-Christine Davis7,1,§, and Jeremy Sakstein8,∥

  • 1Kavli Institute for Cosmology (KICC), University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, United Kingdom
  • 2Institute of Astronomy (IoA), University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, United Kingdom
  • 3Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, C.P. 13, I-100044 Frascati, Italy
  • 4Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240 Shanghai, China
  • 5Gravitation Astroparticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA), University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 6Institute de Physique Theórique (IPhT), Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, F-91191, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
  • 7Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Center for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom
  • 8Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Hawai’i, Watanabe Hall, 2505 Correa Road, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822, USA

  • *sunny.vagnozzi@ast.cam.ac.uk
  • luca.visinelli@sjtu.edu.cn
  • philippe.brax@cea.fr
  • §ad107@cam.ac.uk
  • sakstein@hawaii.edu
  • These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Vol. 104, Iss. 6 — 15 September 2021

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