A neutrino floor for the Migdal effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detecting the Migdal effect caused by solar neutrinos in liquid xenon detectors, highlighting its implications as an irreducible background for light dark matter searches and exploring new physics signals.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed prospects for observing the Migdal effect from solar neutrinos and discusses its impact on dark matter detection sensitivity and new physics signals.

Findings

Potential to detect Migdal effect via solar neutrinos in xenon detectors

Identification of a distinct 0.1 keV peak from non-standard neutrino interactions

Neutrino-induced Migdal effect as an irreducible background for dark matter searches

Abstract

Neutrino-nucleus scatterings in the detector could induce electron ionization signatures due to the Migdal effect. We derive prospects for a future detection of the Migdal effect via coherent elastic solar neutrino-nucleus scatterings in liquid xenon detectors, and discuss the irreducible background that it constitutes for the Migdal effect caused by light dark matter-nucleus scatterings. Furthermore, we explore the ionization signal induced by some neutrino electromagnetic and non-standard interactions on nuclei. In certain scenarios, we find a distinct peak on the ionization spectrum of xenon around 0.1 keV, in clear contrast to the Standard Model expectation.