학술논문
QUEST-DMC superfluid 3He detector for sub-GeV dark matter
Document Type
Original Paper
Author
Autti, S.; Casey, A.; Eng, N.; Darvishi, N.; Franchini, P.; Haley, R. P.; Heikkinen, P. J.; Jennings, A.; Kemp, A.; Leason, E.; Levitin, L. V.; Monroe, J.; March-Russel, J.; Noble, M. T.; Prance, J. R.; Rojas, X.; Salmon, T.; Saunders, J.; Smith, R.; Thompson, M. D.; Tsepelin, V.; West, S. M.; Whitehead, L.; Zavjalov, V. V.; Zmeev, D. E.
Source
The European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields. 84(3)
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
1434-6052
Abstract
The focus of dark matter searches to date has been on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in the GeV/c2c23c2-TeV/c2c23c2 mass range. The direct, indirect and collider searches in this mass range have been extensive but ultimately unsuccessful, providing a strong motivation for widening the search outside this range. Here we describe a new concept for a dark matter experiment, employing superfluid c2c23c2He as a detector for dark matter that is close to the mass of the proton, of order 1 GeV/c2c23c2. The QUEST-DMC detector concept is based on quasiparticle detection in a bolometer cell by a nanomechanical resonator. In this paper we develop the energy measurement methodology and detector response model, simulate candidate dark matter signals and expected background interactions, and calculate the sensitivity of such a detector. We project that such a detector can reach sub-eV nuclear recoil energy threshold, opening up new windows on the parameter space of both spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions of light dark matter candidates.