Galactic geology: Probing time-varying dark matter signals with paleodetectors
| Autor: | Sebastian Baum, William DeRocco, Thomas D. P. Edwards, Saarik Kalia |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
010308 nuclear & particles physics FOS: Physical sciences Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies 01 natural sciences High Energy Physics - Experiment High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) 13. Climate action Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) 0103 physical sciences Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 010306 general physics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| Zdroj: | Physical Review D. 104 |
| ISSN: | 2470-0029 2470-0010 |
| Popis: | Paleo-detectors are a proposed experimental technique to search for dark matter by reading out the damage tracks caused by nuclear recoils in small samples of natural minerals. Unlike a conventional real-time direct detection experiment, paleo-detectors have been accumulating these tracks for up to a billion years. These long integration times offer a unique possibility: by reading out paleo-detectors of different ages, one can explore the time-variation of signals on megayear to gigayear timescales. We investigate two examples of dark matter substructure that could give rise to such time-varying signals. First, a dark disk through which the Earth would pass every $\sim$45 Myr, and second, a dark matter subhalo that the Earth encountered during the past gigayear. We demonstrate that paleo-detectors are sensitive to these examples under a wide variety of experimental scenarios, even in the presence of substantial background uncertainties. This paper shows that paleo-detectors may hold the key to unraveling our Galactic history. 26 pages, 16 figures, 2 tables, code available at https://github.com/sbaum90/paleoSens and https://github.com/sbaum90/paleoSpec. Published version |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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