Dark Matter Detection With Electron Neutrinos in Liquid Scintillation Detectors

TL;DR

This paper explores how liquid scintillation detectors like KamLAND can detect electron neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in the sun, offering new sensitivity to dark matter properties and potential confirmation of existing signals.

Contribution

It demonstrates that KamLAND can significantly improve constraints on dark matter interactions using existing data, especially for low-mass dark matter particles.

Findings

KamLAND can probe dark matter-proton spin-dependent scattering below 20 GeV.

It can also test spin-independent scattering for isospin-violating dark matter below 10 GeV.

Existing data may confirm dark matter signals from DAMA and CoGeNT.

Abstract

We consider the prospects for liquid scintillation experiments (with a focus on KamLAND) to detect the flux of electron neutrinos arising from dark matter annihilation in the core of the sun. We show that, with data already taken, KamLAND can provide the greatest sensitivity to the dark matter-proton spin-dependent scattering cross-section for dark matter lighter than 20 GeV. It is also possible to probe the dark matter-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross-section for isospin-violating dark matter lighter than 10 GeV. KamLAND can thus potentially confirm the dark matter interpretation of the DAMA and CoGeNT signals, utilizing data already taken.