Measuring the Migdal effect in semiconductors for dark matter detection

Abstract

The Migdal effect has received much attention from the dark matter direct detection community, in particular due to its power in setting limits on sub-GeV particle dark matter. Currently, there is no experimental confirmation of the Migdal effect through nuclear scattering using Standard Model probes. In this work, we extend existing calculations of the Migdal effect to the case of neutron-nucleus scattering, with a particular focus on neutron scattering angle distributions in silicon. We identify kinematic regimes wherein the assumptions present in current calculations of the Migdal effect hold for neutron scattering, and demonstrate that these include viable neutron calibration schemes. We then apply this framework to propose an experimental strategy to measure the Migdal effect in cryogenic silicon detectors using an upgrade to the NEXUS facility at Fermilab.

17 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• A neutrino floor for the Migdal effect
• Spin-dependent sub-GeV Inelastic Dark Matter-electron scattering and Migdal effect: (I). Velocity Independent Operator
• An Improved Bound on Accelerated Light Dark Matter
• On the impact of the Migdal effect in reactor CE$\nu$NS experiments
• Exploring light dark matter with the Migdal effect in hydrogen-doped liquid xenon
• The Non-Relativistic Effective Field Theory Of Dark Matter-Electron Interactions
• Low-mass constraints on WIMP effective models of inelastic scattering using the Migdal effect
• Measuring the molecular Migdal effect with neutron scattering on diatomic gases
• The Migdal effect in solid crystals and the role of non-adiabaticity
• Comparison of the Migdal transition probabilities in electron-atom inelastic cross sections