Towards a neutrino-limited dark matter search with crystalline xenon

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.15082
• Publication Date: 2024-04-29
• Authors: Hao Chen; Ryan Gibbons; S. J. Haselschwardt; Scott Kravitz; Qing Xia; Peter Sorensen
• Keywords: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex); Physical Sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Particle and High Energy Physics; Nuclear and Plasma Physics; Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); High Energy Physics - Experiment

Experiments searching for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter are now detecting background events from solar neutrino-electron scattering. However, the dominant radioactive background in state-of-the-art experiments such as LZ and XENONnT is beta decays from radon contamination. In spite of careful detector material screening, radon progenitor atoms are ubiquitous and long-lived, and radon is extremely soluble in liquid xenon. We propose a change of phase and demonstrate that crystalline xenon offers more than a factor ×500 exclusion against radon ingress, compared with the liquid state. This level of radon exclusion would allow crystallized versions of existing experiments to probe spin-independent cross sections near 10−47 cm2 in roughly 11 years, as opposed to the 35 years required otherwise. Published by the American Physical Society 2024