2014/06/30 by K. Abe, K. Hieda, Kotaro Hieda +50 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Electron #Lepton #Light dark matter #Meson #Missing energy #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Physics #Pseudoscalar #Scalar field dark matter #Weakly interacting massive particles #Xenon #astro-ph.CO #hep-ex #nucl-ex #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.113.121301
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 121301 (2014) · 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2014/08/21 · openalex publication_date 2014/09/18 · arxiv updated 2014/09/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Bosonic superweakly interacting massive particles (super-WIMPs) are a candidate for warm dark matter. With the absorption of such a boson by a xenon atom, these dark matter candidates would deposit an energy equivalent to their rest mass in the detector. This is the first direct detection experiment exploring the vector super-WIMPs in the mass range between 40 and 120 keV. With the use of 165.9 day of data, no significant excess above background was observed in the fiducial mass of 41 kg. The present limit for the vector super-WIMPs excludes the possibility that such particles constitute all of dark matter. The absence of a signal also provides the most stringent direct constraint on the coupling constant of pseudoscalar super-WIMPs to electrons. The unprecedented sensitivity was achieved exploiting the low background at a level 10(-4) kg-1 keVee-1 day-1 in the detector.