The hunt for sub-GeV dark matter at neutrino facilities: a survey of past and present experiments

TL;DR

This paper reviews how past and current neutrino experiments can detect sub-GeV dark matter, highlighting their potential to explore new parameter space and complement future searches.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of neutrino experiments' sensitivity to light dark matter, identifying existing limits and proposing improvements for future searches.

Findings

NOνA and BEBC exclude scalar thermal targets for 10-100 MeV dark matter.

Off-axis searches with NuMI and detectors like MicroBooNE can significantly improve limits.

Neutrino facilities can effectively search for light dark matter alongside neutrino studies.

Abstract

We survey the sensitivity of past and present neutrino experiments to MeV-GeV scale dark matter, and find that these experiments possess novel sensitivity that has not yet fully explored. NO$\nu$A and BEBC are found to rule out the scalar thermal target for dark matter masses between 10 MeV to 100 MeV with existing data, while CHARM-II and MINER$\nu$A place somewhat weaker limits. These limits can be dramatically improved by off-axis searches using the NuMI beamline and the MicroBooNE, MiniBooNE or ICARUS detectors, and can even begin to probe the Majorana thermal target. We conclude that past and present neutrino facilities can search for light dark matter concurrently with their neutrino program and reach a competitive sensitivity to proposed future experiments.