Related papers: XENON1T Excess: Some Possible Backgrounds
The recent puzzling results of the XENON1T collaboration at few keV electronic recoils could be due to the scattering of solar neutrinos endowed with finite Majorana transition magnetic moments (TMMs). Within such general formalism, we find…
One of the most puzzling questions in neutrino physics is the origin of the excess at 5 MeV in the reactor antineutrino spectrum. In this paper, we explore the excess via the reaction $^{13}$C$(\overline{\nu}, \overline{\nu}^\prime…
Recent results from the SENSEI experiment show that a cut on event clustering can reduce low-energy excesses in their eV-sensitive calorimeter. This hints at the role of surrounding uninstrumented surfaces in producing backgrounds. Charged…
To measure the main characteristics of radiative neutron decay, namely its relative intensity BR (branching ratio), it is necessary to measure the spectra of double coincidences between beta-electron and proton as well as the spectra of…
We investigate different scenarios for the origin of the extragalactic radio background. The surface brightness of the background, as reported by the ARCADE 2 collaboration, is several times higher than that which would result from…
Recent experiments searching for sub-GeV/$c^2$ dark matter have observed event excesses close to their respective energy thresholds. Although specific to the individual technologies, the measured excess event rates have been consistently…
Naturally occurring background radiation is a source of correlated decoherence events in superconducting qubits that will challenge error-correction schemes. To characterize the radiation environment in an unshielded laboratory, we…
The MiniBooNE Collaboration observes unexplained electron-like events in the reconstructed neutrino energy range from 200 to 475 MeV. With $6.46 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target, 544 electron-like events are observed in this energy range,…
Nuclear reactors represent a promising neutrino source for CE$\nu$NS (coherent-elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering) searches. However, reactor sites also come with high ambient neutron flux. Neutron capture-induced nuclear recoils can…
The origin of the excess of low-energy events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment remains a mystery, despite exhaustive investigations of backgrounds and a series of null measurements from complementary experiments. One intriguing…
Boosted dark particles of astrophysical origin can lead to nonstandard nuclear or electron recoil signals in direct detection experiments. %It has been shown that this interpretation successfully explains the excess of keV electron recoil…
We provide updates to the limits on solar emission of dark photons, or more generally any light vector particle coupled to the electron vector current. The recent 2019 and 2020 electronic recoil data from XENON1T now provides more stringent…
We consider the non-oscillatory explanations of the low energy excess of events detected by MiniBooNE. We present a systematic search for phenomenological scenarios based on new physics which can produce the excess. We define scenarios as…
The MiniBooNE low-energy excess stands as an unexplained anomaly in short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. It has been shown that it can be explained in the context of dark sector models. Here, we provide an overview of the…
We discuss several low-energy backgrounds to sub-GeV dark matter searches, which arise from high-energy particles of cosmic or radioactive origin that interact with detector materials. We focus in particular on Cherenkov radiation,…
There is a robust signal for a 511 keV photon line from the galactic center which may originate from dark matter particles with masses of a few MeV. To avoid the bounds from delayed recombination and from the absence of the line from dwarf…
We demonstrate by numerical flux calculations that neutrino beams producing the observed highest energy cosmic rays by weak interactions with the relic neutrino background require a non-uniform distribution of sources. Such sources have to…
Research reactors host a wide range of activities that make use of the intense neutron fluxes generated at these facilities. Recent interest in performing measurements with relatively low event rates, e.g. reactor antineutrino detection, at…
Recently, the CoGeNT experiment has reported events in excess of expected background. We analyze dark matter scenarios which can potentially explain this signal. Under the standard case of spin independent scattering with equal couplings to…
The KATRIN experiment is designed to measure the absolute neutrino mass scale with a sensitivity of 200 meV at 90% C.L. by high resolution tritium beta-spectroscopy. A low background level of 10 mHz at the beta-decay endpoint is required in…