Discovering Dark Matter at the LHC through Its Nuclear Scattering in Far-Forward Emulsion and Liquid Argon Detectors

Abstract

The LHC may produce light, weakly-interacting particles that decay to dark matter, creating an intense and highly collimated beam of dark matter particles in the far-forward direction. We investigate the prospects for detecting this dark matter in two far-forward detectors proposed for a future Forward Physics Facility: FASER$\nu$2, a 10-tonne emulsion detector, and FLArE, a 10- to 100-tonne LArTPC. We focus here on nuclear scattering, including elastic scattering, resonant pion production, and deep inelastic scattering, and devise cuts that efficiently remove the neutrino-induced background. In the invisibly-decaying dark photon scenario, DM-nuclear scattering probes new parameter space for dark matter masses 5 MeV $\lesssim m_{\chi }\lesssim$ 500 MeV. When combined with the DM-electron scattering studied previously, FASER$\nu$2 and FLArE will be able to discover dark matter in a large swath of the cosmologically-favored parameter space with MeV $\lesssim m_{\chi }\lesssim$ GeV.

arXiv comment28 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Version published in PRD

References in corpus (73)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• LHAPDF6: parton density access in the LHC precision era
• EPOS LHC : test of collective hadronization with LHC data
• Secluded WIMP Dark Matter
• The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator
• Inelastic Dark Matter
• Scalar Dark Matter candidates
• FeynCalc 9.3: New features and improvements
• From eV to EeV: Neutrino Cross Sections Across Energy Scales
• The Belle II Physics Book
• nCTEQ15 - Global analysis of nuclear parton distributions with uncertainties in the CTEQ framework
• Physics Beyond Colliders at CERN: Beyond the Standard Model Working Group Report
• Cosmic ray event generator Sibyll 2.1
• CMB Constraints on WIMP Annihilation: Energy Absorption During the Recombination Epoch
• Exploring Portals to a Hidden Sector Through Fixed Targets
• Design and Construction of the MicroBooNE Detector
• The WIMPless Miracle: Dark Matter Particles without Weak-scale Masses or Weak Interactions
• FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC
• FASER's Physics Reach for Long-Lived Particles
• Search for Invisible Decays of a Dark Photon Produced in e+e- Collisions at BaBar
• New Exclusion Limits on Dark Gauge Forces from Proton Bremsstrahlung in Beam-Dump Data
• Strong Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from SLAC Beam Dump E137
• Probing Light Thermal Dark-Matter With a Higgs Portal Mediator
• Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF
• Observing a light dark matter beam with neutrino experiments
• Dark Matter, Millicharges, Axion and Scalar Particles, Gauge Bosons, and Other New Physics with LDMX
• Dark matter search in missing energy events with NA64
• Accelerating the Discovery of Light Dark Matter
• Detecting and Studying High-Energy Collider Neutrinos with FASER at the LHC
• Search for pair and single production of vectorlike quarks in final states with at least one $Z$ boson decaying into a pair of electrons or muons in $pp$ collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Dark Matter Search in Nucleon, Pion, and Electron Channels from a Proton Beam Dump with MiniBooNE
• Light dark matter in neutrino beams: production modelling and scattering signatures at MiniBooNE, T2K and SHiP
• Inelastic Dark Matter at the LHC Lifetime Frontier: ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, CODEX-b, FASER, and MATHUSLA
• Signatures of sub-GeV dark matter beams at neutrino experiments
• Leptophobic Dark Matter at Neutrino Factories
• Dark Matter Search in a Proton Beam Dump with MiniBooNE
• Light new physics in coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering experiments
• Measurement of ν_μand \barν_μinduced neutral current single ${\pi }^0$ production cross sections on mineral oil at E_νO(1 GeV)
• Thermal Dark Matter Through the Dirac Neutrino Portal
• Forward Neutrino Fluxes at the LHC
• DAEdALUS and Dark Matter Detection
• Technical Proposal for FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC
• Demonstration of MeV-Scale Physics in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers Using ArgoNeuT
• The detection of back-to-back proton pairs in Charged-Current neutrino interactions with the ArgoNeuT detector in the NuMI low energy beam line
• Impact of Resonance on Thermal Targets for Invisible Dark Photon Searches
• Detecting Dark Matter with Far-Forward Emulsion and Liquid Argon Detectors at the LHC
• FORMOSA: Looking Forward to Millicharged Dark Sectors
• Measurement of single pi0 production in neutral current neutrino interactions with water by a 1.3 GeV wide band muon neutrino beam
• Dark matter signals from timing spectra at neutrino experiments
• A novel way to search for light dark matter in lepton beam-dump experiments
• Hunting On- and Off-Axis for Light Dark Matter with DUNE-PRISM
• Combined search for light dark matter with electron and muon beams at NA64
• Extending the reach of FASER, MATHUSLA, and SHiP towards smaller lifetimes using secondary particle production
• GeV-scale dark matter: production at the Main Injector
• Letter of Intent for FASER: ForwArd Search ExpeRiment at the LHC
• Neutral Current Neutrino Interactions at FASER$\nu$
• Light Dark Matter eXperiment (LDMX)
• Far-forward neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider
• Neutrino beam-dump experiment with FASER at the LHC
• Dark matter beams at LBNF
• Searches for new physics at SND@LHC
• Technical Proposal: FASERnu
• On sub-GeV Dark Matter Production at Fixed-Target Experiments
• Three-dimensional Imaging for Large LArTPCs
• Tau neutrinos at DUNE: new strategies, new opportunities
• High-performance Generic Neutrino Detection in a LArTPC near the Earth's Surface with the MicroBooNE Detector
• Cosmic Ray Background Rejection with Wire-Cell LArTPC Event Reconstruction in the MicroBooNE Detector
• Resonant Sub-GeV Dirac Dark Matter
• Design and implementation of the new scintillation light detection system of ICARUS T600
• The hunt for sub-GeV dark matter at neutrino facilities: a survey of past and present experiments
• SND@LHC
• Dark matter search in a Beam-Dump eXperiment (BDX) at Jefferson Lab
• Neutrino Event Selection in the MicroBooNE Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber using Wire-Cell 3-D Imaging, Clustering, and Charge-Light Matching

Cited by in corpus (14)

• The Forward Physics Facility: Sites, Experiments, and Physics Potential
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Neutrino Up-scattering via the Dipole Portal at Forward LHC Detectors
• Dark Sector Production via Proton Bremsstrahlung
• Hadrophilic Dark Sectors at the Forward Physics Facility
• FLArE up dark sectors with EM form factors at the LHC Forward Physics Facility
• Science and Project Planning for the Forward Physics Facility in Preparation for the 2024-2026 European Particle Physics Strategy Update
• Neutrino Electromagnetic Properties and the Weak Mixing Angle at the LHC Forward Physics Facility
• Leptoquark search at the Forward Physics Facility
• Neutrino Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
• Sensitivities on dark photon from the Forward Physics Experiments
• Detecting LHC Neutrinos at Surface Level
• The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC
• Letter of Intent: The Forward Physics Facility