A Realistic Assessment of the Sensitivity of XENON10 and XENON100 to Light-Mass WIMPs

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates the assumptions behind XENON10 and XENON100 WIMP exclusion limits, revealing that recent claims of sensitivity to light-mass WIMPs are overstated and questioning the significance of bounds from other experiments.

Contribution

It provides a realistic assessment of the uncertainties affecting WIMP detection limits and challenges the claimed sensitivities to light-mass WIMPs by recent experiments.

Findings

XENON limits are more uncertain than previously acknowledged.

Claims of sensitivity to light WIMPs are overstated.

Bounds from DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT, and CRESST have limited significance.

Abstract

The underlaying assumptions and uncertainties involved in the derivation of WIMP exclusion limits from XENON10 and XENON100 detectors are examined. In view of these, recent claims of sensitivity to light-mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are shown to be overstated. Specifically, bounds constraining regions of interest in WIMP parameter space from the DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT and CRESST experiments can be assigned a very limited meaning, if any.