Search for inelastic interactions of WIMP dark matter in XENON1T

The XENON collaboration has set world-leading constraints on the cross-section of WIMP dark matter interacting inelastically, in a pre-print published on arXiv and co-authored by the Astroparticle Physics group of the University of Freiburg.

XENON1T viewed from below

This approach to searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) complements previous results, searching for elastic scattering. During the inelastic scattering process, xenon nuclei would be excited and subsequently release a gamma-ray with a characteristic energy. This would be detected in addition to the usual low-energy signal induced by the WIMP-nucleus interaction itself.

The search is performed using data collected by the XENON1T experiment, between February 2017 and February 2018. This corresponds to a total exposure of 0.89 tonne-years. No dark matter signal was found in the dataset. As a result, the collaboration places an upper limit on the cross-section of such interactions. The strongest limit is 3.3×10⁻³⁹ cm² for WIMPs with a mass of 130 GeV/c², at 90% confidence level.

These results have been submitted for publication in the journal Physical Review D.

Original Publication:
Search for inelastic scattering of WIMP dark matter in XENON1T
E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration)
arXiv:2011.10431