Search for Coherent Elastic Scattering of Solar $^8$B Neutrinos in the XENON1T Dark Matter Experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for solar $^8$B neutrino elastic scattering in XENON1T data, setting new constraints on neutrino interactions and dark matter properties by lowering detection thresholds and developing novel background mitigation techniques.

Contribution

It introduces new methods to lower energy thresholds and constrain neutrino and dark matter interactions using non-detection data in liquid xenon detectors.

Findings

No significant neutrino-like excess was observed.

New constraints on light yield from 1-2 keV nuclear recoils.

Improved limits on dark matter-nucleus interactions for 3-11 GeV/c$^2$ masses.

Abstract

We report on a search for nuclear recoil signals from solar $^8$B neutrinos elastically scattering off xenon nuclei in XENON1T data, lowering the energy threshold from 2.6 keV to 1.6 keV. We develop a variety of novel techniques to limit the resulting increase in backgrounds near the threshold. No significant $^8$B neutrino-like excess is found in an exposure of 0.6 t $\times$ y. For the first time, we use the non-detection of solar neutrinos to constrain the light yield from 1-2 keV nuclear recoils in liquid xenon, as well as non-standard neutrino-quark interactions. Finally, we improve upon world-leading constraints on dark matter-nucleus interactions for dark matter masses between 3 GeV/c$^2$ and 11 GeV/c$^2$ by as much as an order of magnitude.