Neutrino Coherent Scattering Rates at Direct Dark Matter Detectors

TL;DR

This paper evaluates neutrino-induced recoil backgrounds in direct dark matter detectors, analyzing various neutrino sources and their impact on WIMP detection sensitivity, especially for large-scale experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of neutrino backgrounds from multiple sources and assesses their significance for future dark matter detection efforts.

Findings

$^8$B solar neutrinos produce the highest recoil event rates.

Most $^8$B neutrino events are below current detector thresholds.

Neutrino backgrounds become significant only if WIMP-nucleon cross section is below $10^{-12}$ pb.

Abstract

Neutrino-induced recoil events may constitute a background to direct dark matter searches, particularly for those detectors that strive to reach the ton-scale and beyond. This paper discusses the expected neutrino-induced background spectrum due to several of the most important sources, including solar, atmospheric, and diffuse supernova neutrinos. The largest rate arises from $^8$B produced solar neutrinos, providing upwards of $\sim 10^3$ events per ton-year over all recoil energies for the heaviest nuclear targets. However the majority of these $^8$B events are expected to be below the recoil threshold of modern detectors. The remaining neutrino sources are found to constitute a background to the WIMP-induced recoil rate only if the WIMP-nucleon cross section is less than $10^{-12}$ pb. Finally the sensitivity to diffuse supernova neutrino flux for non-electron neutrino flavors is discussed, and projected flux limits are compared with existing flux limits.