Dark matter search in a Beam-Dump eXperiment (BDX) at Jefferson Lab
Abstract
MeV-GeV dark matter (DM) is theoretically well motivated but remarkably unexplored. This Letter of Intent presents the MeV-GeV DM discovery potential for a 1 m segmented plastic scintillator detector placed downstream of the beam-dump at one of the high intensity JLab experimental Halls, receiving up to 10 electrons-on-target (EOT) in a one-year period. This experiment (Beam-Dump eXperiment or BDX) is sensitive to DM-nucleon elastic scattering at the level of a thousand counts per year, with very low threshold recoil energies (1 MeV), and limited only by reducible cosmogenic backgrounds. Sensitivity to DM-electron elastic scattering and/or inelastic DM would be below 10 counts per year after requiring all electromagnetic showers in the detector to exceed a few-hundred MeV, which dramatically reduces or altogether eliminates all backgrounds. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations are in progress to finalize the detector design and experimental set up. An existing 0.036 m prototype based on the same technology will be used to validate simulations with background rate estimates, driving the necessary RD towards an optimized detector. The final detector design and experimental set up will be presented in a full proposal to be submitted to the next JLab PAC. A fully realized experiment would be sensitive to large regions of DM parameter space, exceeding the discovery potential of existing and planned experiments by two orders of magnitude in the MeV-GeV DM mass range.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.3028,
title = {Dark matter search in a Beam-Dump eXperiment (BDX) at Jefferson Lab},
author = {BDX Collaboration and M. Battaglieri and A. Celentano and R. De Vita and E. Izaguirre and G. Krnjaic and E. Smith and S. Stepanyan and A. Bersani and E. Fanchini and S. Fegan and P. Musico and M. Osipenko and M. Ripani and E. Santopinto and M. Taiuti and P. Schuster and N. Toro and M. Dalton and A. Freyberger and F. -X. Girod and V. Kubarovsky and M. Ungaro and G. De Cataldo and R. De Leo and D. Di Bari and L. Lagamba and E. Nappi and R. Perrino and M. Carpinelli and V. Sipala and S. Aiello and V. Bellini and M. De Napoli and A. Giusa and F. Mammoliti and E. Leonora and F. Noto and N. Randazzo and G. Russo and M. Sperduto and C. Sutera and C. Ventura and L. Barion and G. Ciullo and M. Contalbrigo and P. Lenisa and A. Movsisyan and F. Spizzo and M. Turisini and F. De Persio and E. Cisbani and C. Fanelli and F. Garibaldi and F. Meddi and G. M. Urciuoli and S. Anefalos Pereira and E. De Sanctis and D. Hasch and V. Lucherini and M. Mirazita and R. Montgomery and S. Pisano and G. Simi and A. D'Angelo and L. Colaneri L. Lanza and A. Rizzo and C. Schaerf and I. Zonta and D. Calvo and A. Filippi and M. Holtrop and R. Peremuzyan and D. Glazier and D. Ireland and B. McKinnon and D. Sokhan A. Afanasev and B. Briscoe and N. Kalantarians and L. El Fassi and L. Weinstein and P. Beltrame and A. Murphy and D. Watts and L. Zana and K. Hicks},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.3028},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
28 pages, 17 figures, submitted to JLab PAC 42