Clarity through the Neutrino Fog: Constraining New Forces in Dark Matter Detectors

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Preprint
Report number	IFT-UAM/CSIC-24-164 ; arXiv:2411.14206
Title	Clarity through the Neutrino Fog: Constraining New Forces in Dark Matter Detectors
Author(s)	Blanco-Mas, Pablo (Madrid, IFT ; Madrid, Autonoma U.) ; Coloma, Pilar (Madrid, IFT ; Madrid, Autonoma U.) ; Herrera, Gonzalo (Virginia Tech.) ; Huber, Patrick (Virginia Tech.) ; Kopp, Joachim (CERN ; U. Mainz, PRISMA) ; Shoemaker, Ian M. (Virginia Tech.) ; Tabrizi, Zahra (CERN ; Pittsburgh U.)
Document contact	Contact: arXiv
Imprint	2024-11-21
Number of pages	11
Note	11 pages, 4 figures
Subject category	hep-ex ; Particle Physics - Experiment ; hep-ph ; Particle Physics - Phenomenology
Abstract	The PANDAX-4T and XENONnT experiments present indications of Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CE$\nu$NS) from ${}^{8}$B solar neutrinos at 2.6$\sigma$ and 2.7$\sigma$, respectively. This constitutes the first observation of the neutrino "floor" or "fog", an irreducible background that future dark matter searches in terrestrial detectors will have to contend with. Here, we first discuss the contributions from neutrino-electron scattering and from the Migdal effect in the region of interest of these experiments, and we argue that they are non-negligible. Second, we make use of the recent PANDAX-4T and XENONnT data to derive novel constraints on light scalar and vector mediators coupling to neutrinos and quarks. We demonstrate that these experiments already provide world-leading laboratory constraints on new light mediators in some regions of parameter space.
Other source	Inspire
Copyright/License	preprint: (License: CC BY 4.0)

$Comparison of ionization rates induced by ${}^{8}$B solar neutrinos in a liquid xenon detector via different SM processes: CE$\nu$NS (grey), the Migdal effect (orange), and elastic neutrino--electron scattering (blue). For CE$\nu$NS, a constant quenching factor $q_{nr} = 0.15$ is assumed to translate nuclear recoil energies into electron-equivalent recoil energies. For comparison, we show in shaded pink the approximate ROI of the recent PANDAX-4T and XENONnT analyses of solar neutrinos \cite{PandaX:2024muv, XENON:2024ijk}. The color gradient highlights the fact that the efficiency function is not constant at the ROI of these experiments, but rather increases with energy. The signal induced by CE$\nu$NS clearly dominates in the ROI of these experiments, but the Migdal and neutrino--electron scattering contributions are non-negligible. Note that here we have not applied any efficiency factors to the expected ionization rates.$ $Scattering rates for CE$\nu$NS in the SM (gray), compared to scenarios with a new flavor-universal light scalar (dark red) or vector (light red) mediator. In both cases, we have assumed flavor-universal couplings. We also show the total efficiencies of the PandaX-4T and XENONnT analyses from Refs.~\cite{PandaX:2024muv, XENON:2024ijk} (blue curves / right vertical axis). The plot clearly reveals the enhancement $\propto 1/E_{\rm nr}$ of the scalar-induced scattering processes compared to the SM at low energies, as expected from \cref{eq:xsec-scalar}.$ $\textbf{Top left:} limits on the mass and couplings of a new scalar mediator (see \cref{eq:L-scalar}), from the requirement that coherent elastic neutrino--nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) mediated by this new particle shall not violate the 90\% C.L.\ constraints from PANDAX-4T (light blue) and XENONnT (blue). We show results for both the S1+S2 analysis (solid) and for the S2-only analysis, but find no significant differences in sensitivity. We also show the expected sensitivity of a hypothetical detector with an exposure of 200~tonne yrs (dark blue dotted). The green region is ruled out by measurements of CE$\nu$NS in the cesium iodide (CsI) detectors of COHERENT. We further show upper limits from the CONUS \cite{CONUS:2021dwh} and Dresden-II \cite{Coloma:2022avw} experiments. The parameter region shaded in purple is excluded by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) \cite{Huang:2017egl}. \textbf{Top right:} analogous imits on the mass and couplings of a new scalar mediator with couplings to quarks proportional to the quark masses, see \cref{eq:q-mass-dependence}. \textbf{Bottom left:} constraints on CE$\nu$NS mediated by a light vector with interactions given by \cref{eq:L-vector}. Compared to scalar mediators, we further show bounds in shaded orange on a leptophobic vector from NA62 \cite{NA62:2019meo} and MiniBoone \cite{MiniBooNE:2017nqe}. Furthermore, the region to the left of the dotted black line is excluded by a combination of collider and beam dump experiments when the $Z^{\prime}$ can decay into electron-positron pairs \cite{Graham:2021ggy}. These constraints are significantly relaxed for vector mediators which do not couple to electrons at tree-level.\textbf{Bottom right:} constraints on neutrino--electron scattering through a new leptophilic scalar mediator (see \cref{eq:L-leptophilic}) from the PANDAX-4T S2-only analysis. We compare to limits from BBN, Borexino, CONUS, COHERENT (CsI), and Dresden-II \cite{Coloma:2022umy}.$ Show more plots

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