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arXiv · 2312.15082

Towards a neutrino-limited dark matter search with crystalline xenon

H. Chen·R. Gibbons·S. J. Haselschwardt·S. Kravitz·Q. Xia·P. Sorensen
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Abstract

Experiments searching for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter are now detecting background events from solar neutrino-electron scattering. However, the dominant 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 x500 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 1e-47 cm2 in roughly 11 years, as opposed to the 35~years required otherwise.

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H. Chen, R. Gibbons, S. J. Haselschwardt, S. Kravitz, Q. Xia, P. Sorensen. 2023-12-22. Towards a neutrino-limited dark matter search with crystalline xenon. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15082

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