Abstract
Many compelling models predict dark matter coupling to the electromagnetic current through higher multipole interactions, while remaining electrically neutral. Different multipole couplings have been studied, among them anapole moment, electric and magnetic dipole moments, and millicharge. This study sets limits on the couplings for these photon-mediated interactions using nonrelativistic contact operators in an effective field theory framework. Using data from the PICO-60 bubble chamber leading limits for dark matter masses between 2.7 and 24 GeV/c2 and above 265 GeV/c2 (anapole moment), 2.7 and 11.7 GeV/c2 (electric moment), 3 and 9.5 GeV/c2 (magnetic moment), and 2.7 and 12 GeV/c2 (millicharged) are reported for the coupling of these photon-mediated dark matter-nucleus interactions. The detector was filled with 52 kg of C3F8 operating at thermodynamic thresholds of 2.45 keV and 3.29 keV, reaching exposures of 1404 kg-day and 1167 kg-day, respectively.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 042004 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 15 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The PICO collaboration wishes to thank SNOLAB and its staff for support through underground space, logistical and technical services. SNOLAB operations are supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Province of Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, with underground access provided by Vale at the Creighton mine site. We wish to acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for funding, and the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute. We acknowledge that this work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Grants No. 0919526, No. 1506337, No. 1242637, and No. 1205987), by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics (Grants No. DE-SC0017815 and No. DE-SC-0012161), by the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award, by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India, under the Centre for AstroParticle Physics II project (CAPP-II) at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), and Institutional support of Institute Experimental and Applied Physics (IEAP), Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) (DKRVO). This work is also supported by the German-Mexican research collaboration Grant No. SP 778/4-1 (DFG) and No. 278017 (CONACYT), the Project No. CONACYT CB-2017-2018/A1-S-8960, DGAPA UNAM Grant No. PAPIIT-IN108020, and Fundación Marcos Moshinsky. This work is partially supported by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through NSF Grants No. 1125897 and No. 1806722, and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation and its founder Fred Kavli. We also wish to acknowledge the support from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359, and from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830. We also thank Compute Canada and the Centre for Advanced Computing, ACENET, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, and WestGrid for computational support. The work of M. Bressler is supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Instrumentation Research Award (GIRA). The work of D. Durnford is supported by the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarships—Doctoral program (CGSD). IUSB wishes to acknowledge the work of D. Marizata.
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