Prospects for the Discovery of General Dark Matter-Induced Atomic Responses
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Physics and astronomy (MPPAS), MSc
Publicerad
2020
Författare
Lindroos, Oskar
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
One of the major mysteries of modern physics is dark matter. Proposed by Fritz
Zwicky in 1933, dark matter stands as the answer to several astronomical observations,
but its constituents remain unkown. Since current observations only show
dark matter interacting gravitationally, one can assume that the dark matter particle
is a massive, weakly interacting particle also referred to as a WIMP. In an
attempt to find the dark matter particle, large underground detectors have been
constructed. These detectors utilise the principle of direct detection in order to
detect weakly interacting particles. As the Earth passes through the halo of dark
matter within the Milky Way one expects the flux of dark matter particles that
arises to produce a signal within these experiments. However, so far a signal that
cannot be anything other than dark matter remains to be found. This thesis will
present the sensitivities for future direct detection experiments under the assumption
of general dark matter-electron interactions. We provide the underlying theory of
a model describing general dark matter-electron interactions in the non-relativistic
frame which we use to simulate event rates in active experiments. Based on the null
results in current experiments, we perform a statistical analysis in order to find the
lowest detectable coupling constant for different sets of interactions corresponding
to a specific dark matter particle mass. We express the sensitivity of future direct
detection experiments in terms of statistical significance for signal discovery.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
dark matter , direct detection , statistical significance , projected sensitivity