Undulating dark matter
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Springer
Received: July Revised: October Accepted: October Published: November
23, 13, 13, 23,
2020 2020 2020 2020
Joe Davighi,a Matthew McCullougha,b and Joseph Tooby-Smithc a
DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, U.K. b Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland c Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: We suggest that an interplay between microscopic and macroscopic physics can give rise to dark matter (DM) whose interactions with the visible sector fundamentally undulate in time, independent of celestial dynamics. A concrete example is provided by fermionic DM with an electric dipole moment (EDM) sourced by an oscillating axion-like field, resulting in undulations in the scattering rate. The discovery potential of light DM searches can be enhanced by additionally searching for undulating scattering rates, especially in detection regions where background rates are large and difficult to estimate, such as for DM masses in the vicinity of 1 MeV where DM-electron scattering dominantly populates the single electron bin. An undulating signal could also reveal precious dark sector information after discovery. In this regard we emphasise that, if the recent XENON1T excess of events is due to light DM scattering exothermically off electrons, future analyses of the time-dependence of events could offer clues as to the microscopic origins of the putative signal. Keywords: Beyond Standard Model, Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM, CP violation ArXiv ePrint: 2007.03662
c The Authors. Open Access, Article funded by SCOAP3 .
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2020)120
JHEP11(2020)120
Undulating dark matter
Contents 1
2 An effective field theory description
3
3 Undulating dark EDMs
5
4 Detecting undulating dark matter
6
5 Summary
10
A Three microscopic candidates
12
1
Introduction
The evidence for dark matter is unequivocal, yet our ignorance of the dark sector remains as vast as the Universe it shapes. The experimental effort to detect it is proportionately extensive, pushing back frontiers on mass scales ranging from cosmologically light bosonic fields to astronomically massive objects. Direct detection experiments aimed at observing the scattering of galactic dark matter particles on matter within the laboratory have formed a significant component of this global effort. This strategy has for decades focussed on searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) scattering off nuclei. However, in the last decade, due to a growing synergy between advancing experimental techniques and an evolving theoretical landscape, a new frontier below the GeV scale is opening, with a burgeoning number of experiments and analysis techniques planned and proposed. As a smoking gun for galactic dark matter scattering and also as a powerful background mitigation strategy, the modulation of dark matter scattering rates on diurnal and annual timescales has been a useful tool in
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