2021/06/11 by Sebastian Baum, T. Edwards, Thomas D. P. Edwards +2 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Detector #Nuclear physics #Optics #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Recoil #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.IM #hep-ex #hep-ph #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.3390/instruments5020021
published in Instruments 5(2), 21 (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) · Invited contribution to Instruments "Special Issue Innovative Experimental Techniques for Direct Dark Matter Detection)". 30 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Code available at https://github.com/sbaum90/paleoSpec and https://github.com/sbaum90/paleoSens
arxiv created 2021/06/11 · openalex publication_date 2021/06/11 · arxiv updated 2021/06/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Paleo-detectors are a proposed experimental technique to search for dark matter (DM). In lieu of the conventional approach of operating a tonne-scale real-time detector to search for DM-induced nuclear recoils, paleo-detectors take advantage of small samples of naturally occurring rocks on Earth that have been deep underground (≳5 km), accumulating nuclear damage tracks from recoiling nuclei for O(1)Gyr. Modern microscopy techniques promise the capability to read out nuclear damage tracks with nanometer resolution in macroscopic samples. Thanks to their O(1)Gyr integration times, paleo-detectors could constitute nuclear recoil detectors with keV recoil energy thresholds and 100 kilotonne-yr exposures. This combination would allow paleo-detectors to probe DM-nucleon cross sections orders of magnitude below existing upper limits from conventional direct detection experiments. In this article, we use improved background modeling and a new spectral analysis technique to update the sensitivity forecast for paleo-detectors. We demonstrate the robustness of the sensitivity forecast to the (lack of) ancillary measurements of the age of the samples and the parameters controlling the backgrounds, systematic mismodeling of the spectral shape of the backgrounds, and the radiopurity of the mineral samples. Specifically, we demonstrate that even if the uranium concentration in paleo-detector samples is 10−8 (per weight), many orders of magnitude larger than what we expect in the most radiopure samples obtained from ultra basic rock or marine evaporite deposits, paleo-detectors could still probe DM-nucleon cross sections below current limits. For DM masses ≲ 10 GeV/c2, the sensitivity of paleo-detectors could still reach down all the way to the conventional neutrino floor in a Xe-based direct detection experiment.