Conveners
Mineral detection of dark matter and neutrinos: Friday block 2
- Alexey Elykov (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))
- Patrick Stengel (INFN Ferrara)
Description
Nuclear recoils caused by interactions of Dark Matter or neutrinos can leave latent damage in the crystal structure of minerals. These damage features can be read out using a variety of modern microscopy techniques, ranging from optical (fluorescence) microscopy to techniques with sub-nm spatial resolution such as transmission electron microscopy. Using the damage features accumulated over 10 Myr--1 Gyr in natural mineral samples, one could measure astrophysical neutrino fluxes or search for a variety of Dark Matter candidates. Using signals accumulated over months to few-years timescales in laboratory-manufactured minerals, one could measure reactor neutrinos or use minerals as Dark Matter detectors, potentially with directional sensitivity. This parallel session will summarize some of the latest experimental and theoretical progress towards unlocking the potential of minerals as passive recorders of nuclear recoils.
We present theoretical estimations of the event rates for the interaction between a right-handed neutrino dark matter with an electron bound to a Xenon atom. Motivated by recent results on dark matter in cosmological and astrophysical contexts, we study a fermionic dark matter candidate with a mass of 200 keV as a case of example. The interaction occurs through an effective electromagnetic...
The paleo-detector technique proposes to use long-age minerals, which have been exposed to an enormous flux of particles, as astroparticle detectors. Some of these particles should have interacted with mineral nuclei, generating linear defects in the crystalline structure in the form of tracks. The paleo-detectors have been proposed to detect dark matter and neutrinos, using minerals found...
Using ancient minerals as paleo-detectors is a proposed experimental technique expected to transform supernova neutrino and dark matter detection. In this technique, minerals are processed and closely analyzed for nanometer scale damage track remnants from nuclear recoils caused by supernova neutrinos and possibly dark matter. These damage tracks present the opportunity to directly detect and...
With Dark Matter still eluding detection a window has opened for new ideas in the field. One such idea is to utilize the advent of modern microscopy and computational techniques to read out nm and $\mu$m-sized damage features produced by interactions of Dark Matter and neutrinos with nuclei of minerals. Natural minerals should have accumulated these minute features over Myrs, allowing us to...
