Direct detection of electromagnetically interacting ultraheavy dark matter

Abstract

At a level too faint for astronomy, particle dark matter may interact with Standard Model states via the photon. We derive limits from direct detection experiments on photon-mediated nuclear interactions up to operator dimension-6, viz., via a millicharge, charge radius, electric and magnetic dipole moment, and anapole moment, up to dark matter masses $\lesssim 10^{17}$ GeV, where detectors become flux-limited. We derive constraints for XENON1T, XENONnT, LZ, PANDAX-II, PANDAX-4T, DarkSide-50, DEAP-3600, PICO-60, and CDMS-II, and estimate future sensitivities for the multi-deca-tonne scale experiments DarkSide-20k, DARWIN/XLZD, PANDAX-xT, and Argo. Special attention is paid to millicharged dark matter, for which we constrain new parameter space by deriving the ceiling on sensitivity to its electric charge, arising from the nuclear-vs-electron recoil discriminants used in liquid argon and bubble chamber detectors. This result goes beyond ceilings previously identified in liquid xenon and semiconductor detectors from electron recoil vetoes. In particular, the ceiling from PICO-60 closes a large window between direct detection and neutrino experiment limits for dark matter masses below $10^{12}$ GeV.