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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 217 records · Page 12
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

A Scintillating Xenon Bubble Chamber for Dark Matter Detection. Final Report

This report describes the progress in the search for particle dark matter achieved under DOE award DE-SC0012161, as well as the invention of a new dark matter and neutrino detection technique. Work supported by this award follows in three distinct thrusts: (1) the successful completion of the Generation-1 Direct Detection experiment PICO-60, which set the world-leading limit on the spin-dependent coupling of dark matter to protons and achieved a precise understanding of the response of bubble chambers to nuclear-recoil signals and electron-recoil backgrounds; (2) the construction of the Generation-2 Direct Detection experiment LZ, which will soon be the world's most sensitive dark matter detector; and (3) the demonstration of the first scintillating bubble chamber. The development of a scintillating liquid noble bubble chamber was the primary goal of the proposed work, with the aim of combining the excellent background rejection of a PICO-style bubble chamber with the event-by-event energy resolution of a liquid-noble detector such as LZ. This work produced the first ever observation of coincident scintillation and bubble nucleation by a nuclear recoil in a superheated fluid and also revealed an unexpected benefit to the use of noble liquids in a bubble chamber, namely the ability to increase the degree of superheat by an order of magnitude beyond that achievable in PICO-style detectors while maintaining PICO's world-leading background rejection. This discovery has led to new projects in the US and Canada, developing noble liquid bubble chambers both as detectors for low-mass dark matter and as detectors of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) by neutrinos produced at nuclear reactors.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

First High-Throughput Evaluation of Dark Matter Detector Materials

In this work we perform the first high-throughput search and evaluation of materials that can serve as excellent low-mass dark matter detectors. Using properties of close to 1000 materials from the Materials Project database, we project the sensitivity in dark matter parameter space for experiments constructed from each material, including both absorption and scattering processes between dark matter and electrons. Using the anisotropic materials in the dataset, we further compute the level of daily modulation in interaction rates and the resulting directional sensitivities, highlighting materials with prospects to detect the dark matter wind. Our methods provide the basic tools for the data-driven design of dark matter detectors, and our findings lay the groundwork for the next generation of highly optimized direct searches for dark matter as light as the keV scale. This represents a major step in the application of results from condensed matter physics to dark matter search design.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Light Dark Matter Detection with Hydrogen-Rich Targets and Low-$T_c$ TES Detectors

Direct detection of nuclear scatterings of sub-GeV dark matter (DM) particles favors low-Z nuclei. Hydrogen nucleus, which has a single proton, provides the best kinematic match. The characteristic nuclear recoil energy is boosted by a factor of a few tens from those for larger nuclei used in traditional Weakly Interacting Massive Particles searches. Furthermore, hydrogen is optimal for detecting spin-dependent nuclear scatterings of sub-GeV DM, where large parameter space still remains unconstrained yet. In this paper, we first introduce several hydrogen-rich targets, which emit two classes of signals under kinetic excitations. One class of the signals is infrared photons, which are from fundamental vibrational and rotational modes of molecules and at several characteristic wavelengths. Another is acoustic phonons and optical phonons that decay into acoustic phonons. Then we discuss the technical status and future researches of low-T c transition-edge sensor (TES) detectors, which measure the infrared photons and acoustic phonons with desirable sensitivities. Utilization of hydrogen-rich targets and ultra-sensitive low-T c TES detectors for light DM detection requires both theoretical modeling and experimental prototyping.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Detector Characterization for SuperCDMS Commissioning

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) SNOLAB is a next generation direct detection experiment search ing for low mass dark matter using cryogenic germanium and silicon detectors operated at millikelvin temperatures. As the experiment begins its first commissioning data taking, establishing that the detectors respond to energy deposits in a stable, predictable way is a prerequisite for any future physics analysis. This work presents a study of detector stability for four SuperCDMS SNOLAB detectors, det 7 and det 15 (germanium), and det 11 and det 14 (silicon), using two data sets taken during early commissioning: dedicated Barium-133 calibration runs, which provide a known gamma ray energy reference at 356 keV, and low background runs, which record whatever background radiation the detectors see with no external source present. The Ba-133 data do not show a distinct, well localized line at the expected energy, and the low background data show a baseline that drifts and oscillates over time rather than remaining flat. This baseline instability appears consistently across multiple channels rather than being confined to one, suggesting a shared, detector wide cause rather than a single faulty channel. Together, these observations point to the detectors’ cryogenic support system as the likely source of the instability, since small temperature fluctuations introduced during normal operation of the cooling system could plausibly couple into the exquisitely temperature sensitive detectors. These results inform the ongoing commissioning effort by narrowing down where instability in the current data is originating from.

O'Hanlon, Viktoria M. [Skidmore Coll.; Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2026

Detector Characterization for SuperCDMS Commissioning

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) SNOLAB is a next generation direct detection experiment search ing for low mass dark matter using cryogenic germanium and silicon detectors operated at millikelvin temperatures. As the experiment begins its first commissioning data taking, establishing that the detectors respond to energy deposits in a stable, predictable way is a prerequisite for any future physics analysis. This work presents a study of detector stability for four SuperCDMS SNOLAB detectors, det 7 and det 15 (germanium), and det 11 and det 14 (silicon), using two data sets taken during early commissioning: dedicated Barium-133 calibration runs, which provide a known gamma ray energy reference at 356 keV, and low background runs, which record whatever background radiation the detectors see with no external source present. The Ba-133 data do not show a distinct, well localized line at the expected energy, and the low background data show a baseline that drifts and oscillates over time rather than remaining flat. This baseline instability appears consistently across multiple channels rather than being confined to one, suggesting a shared, detector wide cause rather than a single faulty channel. Together, these observations point to the detectors’ cryogenic support system as the likely source of the instability, since small temperature fluctuations introduced during normal operation of the cooling system could plausibly couple into the exquisitely temperature sensitive detectors. These results inform the ongoing commissioning effort by narrowing down where instability in the current data is originating from.

O'Hanlon, Viktoria M. [Skidmore Coll.; Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2023

Fully depleted charge‐coupled device design and technology development

Abstract We describe the advancement of fully depleted charge‐coupled device (CCD) technology for scientific applications. Recent efforts on 650–725 m‐thick CCDs for direct dark‐matter and radiation detection with single‐electron sensitivity are described, as well as the technology transfer of the fully depleted CCD technology to 200 mm‐wafer fabrication facilities.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dark matter from anomaly cancellation at the LHC

We discuss a class of theories that predict a fermionic dark matter candidate from gauge anomaly cancellation. As an explicit example, we study the predictions in theories where the global symmetry associated with baryon number is promoted to a local gauge symmetry. In this context, the symmetry-breaking scale has to be below the multi-TeV scale in order to be in agreement with the cosmological constraints on the dark matter relic density. The new physical “Cucuyo” Higgs boson in the theory has very interesting properties, decaying mainly into two photons in the low mass region, and mainly into dark matter in the intermediate mass region. We study the most important signatures at the Large Hadron Collider, evaluating the experimental bounds. We discuss the correlation between the dark matter relic density, direct detection, and collider constraints. We find that these theories are still viable and are susceptible to being probed in current, and future high-luminosity, running. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Butterworth, Jon (ORCID:0000000259055394)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Majorana neutrinos and dark matter from anomaly cancellation

We discuss a simple theory for neutrino masses where the total lepton number is a local gauge symmetry spontaneously broken below the multi-TeV scale. In this context, the neutrino masses are generated through the canonical seesaw mechanism and a Majorana dark matter candidate is predicted from anomaly cancellation. We discuss in great detail the dark matter annihilation channels and find out the upper bound on the symmetry-breaking scale using the cosmological bounds on the relic density. Since in this context the dark matter candidate has suppressed couplings to the Standard Model quarks, one can satisfy the direct detection bounds even if the dark matter mass is close to the electroweak scale. This theory predicts a light pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (the Majoron) associated to the mechanism of neutrino mass. We discuss briefly the properties of the Majoron and the impact of the big bang nucleosynthesis bounds. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2020

Metastable nuclear isomers as dark matter accelerators

Inelastic dark matter and strongly interacting dark matter are poorly constrained by direct detection experiments since they both require the scattering event to deliver energy from the nucleus into the dark matter in order to have observable effects. We propose to test these scenarios by searching for the collisional deexcitation of metastable nuclear isomers by the dark matter particles. The longevity of these isomers is related to a strong suppression of γ- and β-transitions, typically inhibited by a large difference in the angular momentum for the nuclear transition. The collisional deexcitation by dark matter is possible since heavy dark matter particles can have a momentum exchange with the nucleus comparable to the inverse nuclear size, hence lifting tremendous angular momentum suppression of the nuclear transition. This deexcitation can be observed either by searching for the direct effects of the decaying isomer, or through the rescattering or decay of excited dark matter states in a nearby conventional dark matter detector setup. Existing nuclear isomer sources such as naturally occurring 180m Ta, 137m Ba produced in decaying Cesium in nuclear waste, 177m Lu from medical waste, and 178m Hf from the Department of Energy storage can be combined with current dark matter detector technology to search for this class of dark matter.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Solar reflection of dark matter with dark-photon mediators

Abstract We consider the scattering of low-mass halo dark-matter particles in the hot plasma of the Sun, focusing on dark matter that interact with ordinary matter through a dark-photon mediator. The resulting “solar-reflected” dark matter (SRDM) component contains high-velocity particles, which significantly extend the sensitivity of terrestrial direct-detection experiments to sub-MeV dark-matter masses. We use a detailed Monte Carlo simulation to model the propagation and scattering of dark-matter particles in the Sun, including thermal effects, with special emphasis on ultralight dark-photon mediators. We study the properties of the SRDM flux, obtain exclusion limits from various direct-detection experiments, and provide projections for future experiments, focusing especially on those with silicon and xenon targets. We find that proposed future experiments with xenon and silicon targets can probe the entire “freeze-in benchmark”, in which dark matter is coupled to an ultralight dark photon, including dark-matter masses as low as 𝒪(keV). Our simulations and SRDM fluxes are publicly available.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2022

Recoil imaging for dark matter, neutrinos, and physics beyond the Standard Model

Recoil imaging entails the detection of spatially resolved ionization tracks generated by particle interactions. This is a highly sought-after capability in many classes of detector, with broad applications across particle and astroparticle physics. However, at low energies, where ionization signatures are small in size, recoil imaging only seems to be a practical goal for micro-pattern gas detectors. This white paper outlines the physics case for recoil imaging, and puts forward a decadal plan to advance towards the directional detection of low-energy recoils with sensitivity and resolution close to fundamental performance limits. The science case covered includes: the discovery of dark matter into the neutrino fog, directional detection of sub-MeV solar neutrinos, the precision study of coherent-elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, the detection of solar axions, the measurement of the Migdal effect, X-ray polarimetry, and several other applied physics goals. We also outline the R&D programs necessary to test concepts that are crucial to advance detector performance towards their fundamental limit: single primary electron sensitivity with full 3D spatial resolution at the $\sim$100 micron-scale. These advancements include: the use of negative ion drift, electron counting with high-definition electronic readout, time projection chambers with optical readout, and the possibility for nuclear recoil tracking in high-density gases such as argon. We also discuss the readout and electronics systems needed to scale-up such detectors to the ton-scale and beyond.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Even lighter particle dark matter

We report on recent progress in the search for dark matter particles with masses from 1 Mev c ^{-2} − 2 to 1 Gev c ^{-2} − 2 . Several dark matter candidates in this mass range are expected to generate measurable electronic-recoil signals in direct-detection experiments. We focus on dark matter particles scattering with electrons in semiconductor detectors since they have fundamentally the highest sensitivity due to their low ionization threshold. Charge-coupled device (CCD) silicon detectors are the leading technology, with significant progress expected in the coming years. We present the status of the CCD program and briefly report on other efforts.

Chavarria, Alvaro E.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dark matter raining on DUNE and other large volume detectors

Direct detection is a powerful means of searching for particle physics evidence of dark matter (DM) heavier than about a GeV with o(kiloton) volume, low-threshold detectors. In many scenarios, some fraction of the DM may be boosted to large velocities enhancing and generally modifying possible detection signatures. We investigate the scenario where 100% of the DM is boosted at the Earth due to new attractive long-range forces. This leads to two main improvements in detection capabilities: (1) the large boost allows for detectable signatures of DM well below a GeV at large-volume neutrino detectors, such as DUNE, Super-K, Hyper-K, and JUNO, as possible DM detectors, and (2) the flux at the Earth’s surface is enhanced by a focusing effect. In addition, the model leads to a significant anisotropy in the signal with the DM flowing dominantly vertically at the Earth’s surface instead of the typical approximately isotropic DM signal. We develop the theory behind this model and also calculate realistic constraints using a detailed GENIE simulation of the signal inside detectors.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Coherent Scattering of Low Mass Dark Matter from Optically Trapped Sensors

In this work, we propose a search for low mass dark matter particles through momentum recoils caused by their scattering from trapped, nanometer-scale objects. Our projections show that even with a modest array of femtogram-mass sensors, parameter space beyond the reach of existing experiments can be explored. The case of smaller, attogram-mass sensors is also analyzed-where dark matter can coherently scatter from the entire sensor-enabling a large enhancement in the scattering cross-section relative to interactions with single nuclei. Large arrays of such sensors have the potential to investigate new parameter space down to dark matter masses as low as 10 keV. If recoils from dark matter are detected by such sensors, their inherent directional sensitivity would allow an unambiguous identification of a dark matter signal.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

How to Build an Empirical Speed Distribution for Dark Matter in the Solar Neighborhood

The dark matter flux in a direct detection experiment depends on its local speed distribution. This distribution has been inferred from simulations of Milky Way–like galaxies, but such models serve only as proxies, given that no simulation directly captures the detailed evolution of our own Galaxy. This motivates alternative approaches that obtain this distribution directly from observations. In this work, we utilize 98 Milky Way analogues from the TNG50 simulation to develop and validate a procedure for inferring the dark matter speed distribution using the kinematics of nearby stars. We find that the dark matter that originated from old mergers, plus that from recent nonluminous accretions, is well described by a Maxwell–Boltzmann speed distribution centered at the local standard-of-rest velocity. Meanwhile, recently accreted dark matter from massive mergers has speeds that can be traced from the associated stellar debris of these events. The stellar populations systematically underestimate the velocity dispersion of their dark matter counterparts, but a simple kinematic boost brings the two into good alignment. Using the TNG50 host galaxies, we demonstrate that combining these two contributions provides an accurate reconstruction of the local dark matter speeds. As an application of the procedure to our own Galaxy, we utilize stellar kinematic data from Gaia to quantify how the dark matter remnants from the Milky Way’s last major merger impact its speed distribution in the solar neighborhood.

Shpigel, Tal [Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)]↗
DOE OSTI2022

Vector boson dark matter from trinification

We show how trinification models based on the gauge group SU(3) C x SU(3) L x SU(3) R realized near the TeV scale can provide naturally a variety of dark matter (DM) candidates. These models contain a discrete T parity which may remain unbroken even after spontaneous symmetry breaking. The lightest T-odd particle, which could be a fermion, a scalar, or a gauge boson, can constitute the dark matter of the universe. This framework naturally admits a doublet-singlet fermionic DM, a singlet scalar DM, or a vector boson DM. Here we develop the vector boson DM scenario wherein the DM couples off-diagonally with the usual fermions and vector-like fermions present in the theory. We show consistency of this framework with dark matter relic abundance and direct detection limits as well as LHC constraints. We derive upper limits of 900 GeV on the vector gauge boson DM mass and 4.5 TeV on the vector-like quark masses. We also show the consistency of spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking down to Standard Model times an extra U(1) while preserving the T-parity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Freezing-in hadrophilic dark matter at low reheating temperatures

If the reheating temperature at the end of inflation is low, of order 10 MeV, then dark matter produced through ultraviolet freeze-in has a large direct detection cross section. We study such a scenario in which dark matter is hadrophilic. This leads to dark matter-nucleon scattering cross sections of interest for near-future experiments for dark matter masses in the range of 100 keV–100 MeV. We explore how these predictions vary if reheating is non-instantaneous.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The tiny (g-2) muon wobble from small-μ supersymmetry

A new measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment has been recently reported by the Fermilab Muon g-2 collaboration and shows a 4.2σ departure from the most precise and reliable calculation of this quantity in the Standard Model. Assuming that this discrepancy is due to new physics, we consider its relation with other potential anomalies, especially in the muon sector, as well as clues from the early universe. Here, we comment on new physics solutions discussed extensively in the literature in the past decades, to finally concentrate on a simple supersymmetric model that also provides a dark matter explanation. We show results for an interesting region of supersymmetric parameter space that can be probed at the high luminosity LHC and future colliders, while leading to values of (g μ – 2) consistent with the Fermilab and Brookhaven (g μ – 2) measurements. Such a parameter region can simultaneously realize a Bino-like dark matter candidate compatible with direct detection constraints for small to moderate values of the Higgsino mass parameter |μ|.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗