Mirror dark matter will be confirmed or excluded by XENON1T

TL;DR

This paper discusses how upcoming XENON experiments can definitively test the mirror dark matter hypothesis, which involves a hidden sector mirroring the standard model, by detecting nuclear and electron recoils caused by kinetic mixing.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the entire viable parameter space for mirror dark matter can be tested with current and upcoming direct detection experiments like XENON1T.

Findings

XENON experiments will probe all viable mirror dark matter parameters.

Astrophysical constraints set lower limits on kinetic mixing strength.

Mirror dark matter detection is feasible via nuclear and electron recoils.

Abstract

Mirror dark matter, where dark matter resides in a hidden sector exactly isomorphic to the standard model, can be probed via direct detection experiments by both nuclear and electron recoils if the kinetic mixing interaction exists. In fact, the kinetic mixing interaction appears to be a prerequisite for consistent small scale structure: Mirror dark matter halos around spiral galaxies are dissipative - losing energy via dark photon emission. This ongoing energy loss requires a substantial energy input, which can be sourced from ordinary supernovae via kinetic mixing induced processes in the supernova's core. Astrophysical considerations thereby give a lower limit on the kinetic mixing strength, and indeed lower limits on both nuclear and electron recoil rates in direct detection experiments can be estimated. We show here that potentially all of the viable parameter space will be probed in forthcoming XENON experiments including LUX and XENON1T. Thus, we anticipate that these experiments will provide a definitive test of the mirror dark matter hypothesis.