Aprile, E., Aalbers, J., Agostini, F. et al. (130 more authors) (2019) First results on the scalar WIMP-pion coupling, using the XENON1T experiment. Physical Review Letters, 122 (7). 071301. ISSN: 0031-9007
Abstract
We present first results on the scalar coupling of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) to pions from 1 t yr of exposure with the XENON1T experiment. This interaction is generated when the WIMP couples to a virtual pion exchanged between the nucleons in a nucleus. In contrast to most nonrelativistic operators, these pion-exchange currents can be coherently enhanced by the total number of nucleons and therefore may dominate in scenarios where spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interactions are suppressed. Moreover, for natural values of the couplings, they dominate over the spin-dependent channel due to their coherence in the nucleus. Using the signal model of this new WIMP-pion channel, no significant excess is found, leading to an upper limit cross section of 6.4×10-46 cm2 (90% confidence level) at 30 GeV/c2 WIMP mass.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | ©2019 American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Dark matter; Particle dark matter; Pions; Weakly interacting massive particles; Dark matter detectors |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
Date Deposited: | 03 Oct 2025 11:48 |
Last Modified: | 03 Oct 2025 11:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Physical Society (APS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1103/physrevlett.122.071301 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:232518 |