Complementarity of dark matter detectors in light of the neutrino background

TL;DR

This paper investigates how combining different target materials in dark matter detectors can mitigate neutrino background effects, enhancing the discovery potential for WIMPs, especially for low-mass candidates.

Contribution

It demonstrates that target complementarity and optimized exposure tuning can significantly improve dark matter detection sensitivity amidst neutrino backgrounds.

Findings

Combining multiple targets enhances neutrino background subtraction.

Optimized exposure ratios improve WIMP discovery potential.

Target complementarity is especially effective for low-mass WIMPs.

Abstract

Direct detection dark matter experiments looking for WIMP-nucleus elastic scattering will soon be sensitive to an irreducible background from neutrinos which will drastically affect their discovery potential. Here we explore how the neutrino background will affect future ton-scale experiments considering both spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions. We show that combining data from experiments using different targets can improve the dark matter discovery potential due to target complementarity. We find that in the context of spin-dependent interactions, combining results from several targets can greatly enhance the subtraction of the neutrino background for WIMP masses below 10 GeV/c$^2$ and therefore probe dark matter models to lower cross-sections. In the context of target complementarity, we also explore how one can tune the relative exposures of different target materials to optimize the WIMP discovery potential.