2024/08/24 by Nassim Bozorgnia, Bozorgnia, Nassim, Muping Chen +5 · 1 voice
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Loop (graph theory) #Mathematics #Physics #Spin (aerodynamics)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.13664
openalex publication_date 2024/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Xenon and argon are the two noble gases used in tonne scale dark matter direct detection experiments. We compare the detection capability of both target elements for interactions due to a pseudoscalar mediator including loop-level contributions to the cross section. At tree-level this type of interaction depends on the nuclear spin and would thus not be detectable in argon-based detectors, since Ar has spin zero. However, at the loop-level the same interaction yields spin-independent contributions that would be detectable in an argon target and are not negligible with respect to the tree-level interactions in xenon, because these are momentum suppressed. In fact, the loop-level contributions are also important for xenon-based experiments at low recoil energies, which could change their discovery reach for this interaction.