Probing Dark Matter Electromagnetic Properties in Direct Detection Experiments

TL;DR

This paper develops a methodology to calculate dark matter scattering rates involving electromagnetic interactions and applies it to set limits using data from major direct detection experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a simple formalism to evaluate dark matter electromagnetic properties in direct detection experiments, including nuclear recoil and Migdal effect contributions.

Findings

Set exclusion limits on dark matter electromagnetic moments from experimental data.

Provided a framework for analyzing photon-mediated dark matter interactions.

Discussed implications for models with t-channel mediators.

Abstract

Astronomical and cosmological observations indicate that dark matter should interact very weakly with the electromagnetic radiation. Nevertheless, the existence of such interactions is not precluded by observations nor by theoretical considerations. A promising approach to probe the dark matter electromagnetic properties is through the search of photon-mediated dark matter-nucleus interactions in direct detection experiments. In this paper we present a simple methodology to calculate the scattering rate in a direct detection experiment for given values of the dark matter electric charge, charge radius, electric- and magnetic- dipole moments and anapole moment. In our work we include contributions to the scattering from nuclear recoils and from the Migdal effect. We finally apply this formalism to determine exclusion limits on the five electromagnetic interactions using data from XENON1T, LZ, PICO-60 and DS50 experiments, and we discuss the implications for a simplified dark matter model with t-channel mediators.