Abstract
With excellent energy resolution and ultralow-level radiogenic backgrounds, the high-purity germanium detectors in the Majorana Demonstrator enable searches for several classes of exotic dark matter (DM) models. In this work, we report new experimental limits on keV-scale sterile neutrino DM via the transition magnetic moment from conversion to active neutrinos νs→νa. We report new limits on fermionic dark matter absorption (χ+A→ν+A) and sub-GeV DM-nucleus 3→2 scattering (χ+χ+A→φ+A), and new exclusion limits for bosonic dark matter (axionlike particles and dark photons). These searches utilize the (1-100)-keV low-energy region of a 37.5-kg y exposure collected by the Demonstrator between May 2016 and November 2019 using a set of Ge76-enriched detectors whose surface exposure time was carefully controlled, resulting in extremely low levels of cosmogenic activation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 041001 |
| Journal | Physical Review Letters |
| Volume | 132 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 26 2024 |
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics under Contracts and Awards No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, No. DE-AC05-00OR22725, No. DE-AC05-76RL0130, No. DE-FG02-97ER41020, No. DE-FG02-97ER41033, No. DE-FG02-97ER41041, No. DE-SC0012612, No. DE-SC0014445, No. DE-SC0018060, No. DE-SC0022339, and No. LANLEM77, and No. LANLEM78. We acknowledge support from the Particle Astrophysics Program and Nuclear Physics Program of the National Science Foundation through Grants No. MRI-0923142, No. PHY-1003399, No. PHY-1102292, No. PHY-1206314, No. PHY-1614611, No. PHY-1812409, No. PHY-1812356, and No. PHY-2111140. For this work, We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for this work. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory LDRD Program, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory LDRD Program, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory LDRD Program for this work. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the South Dakota Board of Regents Competitive Research Grant. We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, funding reference number SAPIN-2017-00023, and from the Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund. We acknowledge support from the 2020/2021 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Programme. This research used resources provided by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility. We thank our hosts and colleagues at the Sanford Underground Research Facility for their support.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund | |
| National Science Foundation | PHY-1003399, PHY-1812409, PHY-1206314, PHY-1614611, PHY-1102292, PHY-1812356, MRI-0923142, PHY-2111140 |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Science | |
| Nuclear Physics | DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC05-76RL0130, DE-AC02-05CH11231, DE-SC0012612, DE-FG02-97ER41020, DE-FG02-97ER41033, DE-SC0022339, DE-FG02-97ER41041, DE-SC0018060, LANLEM78, DE-SC0014445, LANLEM77 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |
| Laboratory Directed Research and Development | |
| South Dakota Board of Regents | |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | |
| Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | |
| National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center | |
| Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada | SAPIN-2017-00023 |