Luminous Dark Matter

Abstract

We propose a dark matter model in which the signal in direct detection experiments arises from electromagnetic, not nuclear, energy deposition. This can provide a novel explanation for DAMA while avoiding many direct detection constraints. The dark matter state is taken nearly degenerate with another state. These states are naturally connected by a dipole moment operator, which can give both the dominant scattering and decay modes between the two states. The signal at DAMA then arises from dark matter scattering in the Earth into the excited state and decaying back to the ground state through emission of a single photon in the detector. This model has unique signatures in direct detection experiments. The density and chemical composition of the detector is irrelevant, only the total volume affects the event rate. In addition, the spectrum is a monoenergetic line, which can fit the DAMA signal well. This model is readily testable at experiments such as CDMS and XENON100 if they analyze their low-energy, electronic recoil events.

23 pages, 3 figures, journal version, added discussion of daily modulation, changed axes label of figure 2

References in corpus (36)

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• First results from DAMA/LIBRA and the combined results with DAMA/NaI
• Inelastic Dark Matter
• New results from DAMA/LIBRA
• Results from the Final Exposure of the CDMS II Experiment
• First Dark Matter Results from the XENON100 Experiment
• Compatibility of DAMA/LIBRA dark matter detection with other searches
• The DAMA/LIBRA apparatus
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Cited by in corpus (44)

• A search for light dark matter in XENON10 data
• Dark matter direct-detection experiments
• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• Direct Detection of Leptophilic Dark Matter in a Model with Radiative Neutrino Masses
• Fundamental Particle Structure in the Cosmological Dark Matter
• Dark matter in the Sun: scattering off electrons vs nucleons
• An X-Ray Line from eXciting Dark Matter
• Exclusion of Leptophilic Dark Matter Models using XENON100 Electronic Recoil Data
• Physics of Dark Matter in the Light of Dark Atoms
• Dark matter scattering on electrons: Accurate calculations of atomic excitations and implications for the DAMA signal
• Can CoGeNT and DAMA Modulations Be Due to Dark Matter?
• Search for a Non-Relativistic Component in the Spectrum of Cosmic Rays at Earth
• Explaining the XENON1T excess with Luminous Dark Matter
• X-ray Lines from Dark Matter: The Good, The Bad, and The Unlikely
• Directional recoil detection
• Annual Modulation in Direct Dark Matter Searches
• Metastable Nuclear Isomers as Dark Matter Accelerators
• Composite magnetic dark matter and the 130 GeV line
• Dark matter detection in two easy steps
• Dipole Moment Dark Matter at the LHC
• Dark Atoms and Puzzles of Dark Matter Searches
• Luminous solar neutrinos I: Dipole portals
• Direct dark matter search by annual modulation with 2.7 years of XMASS-I data
• Probing DAMA/LIBRA in the full parameter space of WIMP effective models of inelastic scattering
• The ups and downs of inelastic dark matter: Electron recoils from terrestrial upscattering
• Dark Matter in Light of LUX
• Luminous Signals of Inelastic Dark Matter in Large Detectors
• Dipole-interacting Fermionic Dark Matter in positron, antiproton, and gamma-ray channels
• Magnetic Inelastic Dark Matter: Directional Signals Without a Directional Detector
• Luminous solar neutrinos II: Mass-mixing portals
• Cosmic Ray-Dark Matter Scattering: a New Signature of (Asymmetric) Dark Matter in the Gamma Ray Sky
• Self-Destructing Dark Matter
• Lowering the low-energy threshold of xenon detectors
• The shadow of dark matter as a shadow of string theory
• The leptophilic dark matter in the Sun: the minimum testable mass
• Enhancing Direct Detection of Higgsino Dark Matter
• Low-Mass dark matter (in)direct detection with inelastic scattering
• The dark atoms of dark matter
• EDGES of the dark forest: A new absorption window into the composite dark matter and large scale structure
• Two-photon exchange in leptophilic dark matter scenarios
• Dark Atoms of the Universe: towards OHe nuclear physics
• Semi-Visible Dark Photon Phenomenology at the GeV Scale
• Earth-Catalyzed Detection of Magnetic Inelastic Dark Matter with Photons in Large Underground Detectors
• A possible explanation for NuTeV's anomalous dimuon events