Dark biportals at direct detection

Abstract

We present a study of the constraining power of low-threshold, high-resolution direct-detection experiments for a biportal simplified dark matter model. In the scenario we consider here, dark matter and Standard Model particles interact through two dark vector mediators $-$ one light and one heavy with respect to the momentum transfer in the experiment. Interference effects at the level of scattering amplitudes can lead to novel marked shape features in the differential recoil spectra, which are best exploited by high-resolution, low-threshold experiments. We identify the region in parameters space for our model where such effects are dominant and show that composite-target experiments with large atomic mass differences are ideal to explore these scenarios. We develop a profile likelihood approach to analyze presently available and future data. Using published results by the CRESST-III experiment and projections of future sensitivities for the COSINUS experiment, we constrain the parameter space in our model, thereby showing the potential of such an analysis on a class of dark matter models which exhibit non-standard features in the recoil spectra.