Publication Details

AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS

SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH

physics and astronomy

Searching for Heavy Dark Matter near the Planck Mass with XENON1T

Physical Review Letters, Volume 130, No. 26, Article 261002, Year 2023

Multiple viable theoretical models predict heavy dark matter particles with a mass close to the Planck mass, a range relatively unexplored by current experimental measurements. We use 219.4 days of data collected with the XENON1T experiment to conduct a blind search for signals from multiply interacting massive particles (MIMPs). Their unique track signature allows a targeted analysis with only 0.05 expected background events from muons. Following unblinding, we observe no signal candidate events. This Letter places strong constraints on spin-independent interactions of dark matter particles with a mass between 1×1012 and 2×1017 GeV/c2. In addition, we present the first exclusion limits on spin-dependent MIMP-neutron and MIMP-proton cross sections for dark matter particles with masses close to the Planck scale.

Statistics
Citations: 100
Authors: 98
Affiliations: 28
Identifiers
Research Areas
Disability
Study Approach
Quantitative