Abstract
If dark matter (DM) particles are lighter than a few MeV/c2 and can scatter off electrons, their interaction within the solar interior results in a considerable hardening of the spectrum of galactic dark matter received on Earth. For a large range of the mass versus cross section parameter space, {me,σe}, the "reflected" component of the DM flux is far more energetic than the end point of the ambient galactic DM energy distribution, making it detectable with existing DM detectors sensitive to an energy deposition of 10-103 eV. After numerically simulating the small reflected component of the DM flux, we calculate its subsequent signal due to scattering on detector electrons, deriving new constraints on σe in the MeV and sub-MeV range using existing data from the XENON10/100, LUX, PandaX-II, and XENON1T experiments, as well as making projections for future low threshold direct detection experiments.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 141801 |
| Journal | Physical review letters |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue number | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 4 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:H. A. is supported by the Walter Burke Institute at Caltech and by DOE Award No. DE-SC0011632. The work of M. P. and A. R. is supported in part by NSERC, Canada, and research at the Perimeter Institute is supported in part by the Government of Canada through NSERC and by the Province of Ontario through Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. J. P. is supported by the New Frontiers program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.