DAMA/NaI

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The DAMA/NaI experiment [1] [2] investigated the presence of dark matter particles in the galactic halo by exploiting the model-independent annual modulation signature. Based on the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the solar system's speed with respect to the center of the galaxy (which on short time scales can be considered constant), the Earth should be exposed to a higher flux of dark matter particles around June 1, [3] when its orbital speed is added to the one of the solar system with respect to the galaxy and to a smaller one around December 2, when the two velocities are subtracted. The annual modulation signature is distinctive since the effect induced by dark matter particles must simultaneously satisfy many requirements.

Contents

Description

The experimental set-up was located deep underground in the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.

The experimental set-up was made by nine 9.70 kg low-radioactivity scintillating thallium-doped sodium iodide crystals [NaI(Tl)]. Each crystal was faced by two low-background photomultipliers through 10 cm light guides. The detectors were installed inside a sealed copper box flushed with highly pure nitrogen in order to insulate the detectors from air that contains trace amounts of radon, a radioactive gas. To reduce the natural environmental background the copper box is enclosed inside a multicomponent multi-ton passive shield made of copper, lead, polyethylene/paraffin, cadmium foil. A plexiglas box encloses the whole shield and is also kept in a highly pure nitrogen atmosphere. A concrete neutron moderator 1 m thick largely surrounds the set-up. The experiment followed the proposal of Pierluigi Belli (then a Ph.D. student, now a research director of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics), which his research group then followed up on.

Results

The DAMA/NaI set-up observed the annual modulation signature over 7 annual cycles (1995–2002). The presence of a model independent positive evidence in the data of DAMA/NaI was first reported by the DAMA collaboration in fall 1997 and published beginning of 1998. [4] The final paper with the full results was published in 2003 after the end of experiment in July 2002. [1] Various corollary investigations are continuing and have also been published. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

The model-independent evidence is compatible with a wide set of scenarios regarding the nature of the dark matter candidate and related astrophysical, nuclear and particle physics, [15] for example: neutralinos, [16] [17] [18] inelastic dark matter, [19] self-interacting dark matter, [20] and heavy 4th generation neutrinos. [21] [22]

A careful quantitative investigation of possible sources of systematic and side reactions has been regularly carried out and published at the time of each data release. [23] No systematic effect or side reaction able to account for the observed modulation amplitude and to simultaneously satisfy all the requirements of the signature has been found.

The experiment has also obtained and published many results on other processes and approaches.

Skepticism

Negative results from the XENON Dark Matter Search Experiment seem to contradict DAMA/Nal's results. [24]

The COSINE-100 collaboration has been working in Korea towards confirming or refuting the DAMA-signal. They are using a similar experimental setup to DAMA (NaI(Tl)-crystals). They published their results in December 2018 in the journal Nature; their conclusion was that their "result rules out WIMP–nucleon interactions as the cause of the annual modulation observed by the DAMA collaboration". [25]

A possible explanation of the reported modulation was pointed out as originating from the data analysis procedure. A yearly subtraction of the constant component can give rise to a sawtooth residual in the presence of a slower time dependence. [26] New support for this hypothesis came in August 2022 when COSINE-100 applied an analysis method similar to one used by DAMA/LIBRA and found a similar annual modulation suggesting the signal could be just a statistical artifact. [27] [28]

In May 2021, the ANAIS dark matter direct detection experiment, [29] after acquiring data for 3 years at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Spain, has not seen evidence for annual modulation in 112.5 kg of NaI(Tl) crystals and is thus incompatible with DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA [30] and in November new results from COSINE-100 experiment after 1.7 years of data collection also failed to replicate the signal of DAMA. [31] [32]

Follow-up

DAMA/NaI has been replaced by the new generation experiment, DAMA/LIBRA. These experiments are carried out by Italian and Chinese researchers.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark matter</span> Concept in cosmology

In astronomy, dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravitational effects which cannot be explained by general relativity unless more matter is present than can be observed. Such effects occur in the context of formation and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing, the observable universe's current structure, mass position in galactic collisions, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies.

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are hypothetical particles that are one of the proposed candidates for dark matter.

In cosmology and physics, cold dark matter (CDM) is a hypothetical type of dark matter. According to the current standard model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM model, approximately 27% of the universe is dark matter and 68% is dark energy, with only a small fraction being the ordinary baryonic matter that composes stars, planets, and living organisms. Cold refers to the fact that the dark matter moves slowly compared to the speed of light, giving it a vanishing equation of state. Dark indicates that it interacts very weakly with ordinary matter and electromagnetic radiation. Proposed candidates for CDM include weakly interacting massive particles, primordial black holes, and axions.

An axion is a hypothetical elementary particle originally theorized in 1978 independently by Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg as the Goldstone boson of Peccei–Quinn theory, which had been proposed in 1977 to solve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter.

In physics, mirror matter, also called shadow matter or Alice matter, is a hypothetical counterpart to ordinary matter.

In particle physics, majorons are a hypothetical type of Goldstone boson that are conjectured to mediate the neutrino mass violation of lepton number or B − L in certain high energy collisions such as

A strongly interacting massive particle (SIMP) is a hypothetical particle that interacts strongly between themselves and weakly with ordinary matter, but could form the inferred dark matter despite this.

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) is a series of experiments designed to directly detect particle dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Using an array of semiconductor detectors at millikelvin temperatures, CDMS has at times set the most sensitive limits on the interactions of WIMP dark matter with terrestrial materials. The first experiment, CDMS I, was run in a tunnel under the Stanford University campus. It was followed by CDMS II experiment in the Soudan Mine. The most recent experiment, SuperCDMS, was located deep underground in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota and collected data from 2011 through 2015. The series of experiments continues with SuperCDMS SNOLAB, an experiment located at the SNOLAB facility near Sudbury, Ontario, in Canada that started construction in 2018 and is expected to start data taking in early 2020s.

The XENON dark matter research project, operated at the Italian Gran Sasso National Laboratory, is a deep underground detector facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to detect hypothetical dark matter particles. The experiments aim to detect particles in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by looking for rare nuclear recoil interactions in a liquid xenon target chamber. The current detector consists of a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC).

In particle physics, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is the generic name given to the lightest of the additional hypothetical particles found in supersymmetric models. In models with R-parity conservation, the LSP is stable; in other words, it cannot decay into any Standard Model particle, since all SM particles have the opposite R-parity. There is extensive observational evidence for an additional component of the matter density in the universe, which goes under the name dark matter. The LSP of supersymmetric models is a dark matter candidate and is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP).

In astrophysics and particle physics, self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) is an alternative class of dark matter particles which have strong interactions, in contrast to the standard cold dark matter model (CDM). SIDM was postulated in 2000 as a solution to the core-cusp problem. In the simplest models of DM self-interactions, a Yukawa-type potential and a force carrier φ mediates between two dark matter particles. On galactic scales, DM self-interaction leads to energy and momentum exchange between DM particles. Over cosmological time scales this results in isothermal cores in the central region of dark matter haloes.

In particle physics, hexaquarks, alternatively known as sexaquarks, are a large family of hypothetical particles, each particle consisting of six quarks or antiquarks of any flavours. Six constituent quarks in any of several combinations could yield a colour charge of zero; for example a hexaquark might contain either six quarks, resembling two baryons bound together, or three quarks and three antiquarks. Once formed, dibaryons are predicted to be fairly stable by the standards of particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Light dark matter</span> Dark matter weakly interacting massive particles candidates with masses less than 1 GeV

Light dark matter, in astronomy and cosmology, are dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) candidates with masses less than 1 GeV. These particles are heavier than warm dark matter and hot dark matter, but are lighter than the traditional forms of cold dark matter, such as Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). The Lee-Weinberg bound limits the mass of the favored dark matter candidate, WIMPs, that interact via the weak interaction to GeV. This bound arises as follows. The lower the mass of WIMPs is, the lower the annihilation cross section, which is of the order , where m is the WIMP mass and M the mass of the Z-boson. This means that low mass WIMPs, which would be abundantly produced in the early universe, freeze out much earlier and thus at a higher temperature, than higher mass WIMPs. This leads to a higher relic WIMP density. If the mass is lower than GeV the WIMP relic density would overclose the universe.

The DAMA/LIBRA experiment is a particle detector experiment designed to detect dark matter using the direct detection approach, by using a matrix of NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors to detect dark matter particles in the galactic halo. The experiment aims to find an annual modulation of the number of detection events, caused by the variation of the velocity of the detector relative to the dark matter halo as the Earth orbits the Sun. It is located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EDELWEISS</span>

EDELWEISS is a dark matter search experiment located at the Modane Underground Laboratory in France. The experiment uses cryogenic detectors, measuring both the phonon and ionization signals produced by particle interactions in germanium crystals. This technique allows nuclear recoils events to be distinguished from electron recoil events.

The Korea Invisible Mass Search (KIMS), is a South Korean experiment, led by Sun Kee Kim, searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), one of the candidates for dark matter. The experiments use CsI(Tl) crystals at Yangyang Underground Laboratory (Y2L), in tunnels from a preexisting underground power plant. KIMS is supported by the Creative Research Initiative program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. It is the first physics experiment located, and largely built, in Korea.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">ANAIS-112</span> Spanish dark matter direct detection experiment

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Daniel S. Akerib is an American particle physicist and astrophysicist. He was elected in 2008 a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

References

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  24. ↑ Matson, John (6 May 2011). "WIMP Wars: Astronomers and physicists remain skeptical of long-standing dark matter claim". Scientific American. Retrieved 12 April 2011.
  25. ↑ COSINE-100 Collaboration; Adhikari, Govinda; Adhikari, Pushparaj; Barbosa De Souza, Estella; Carlin, Nelson; Choi, Seonho; Djamal, Mitra; Ezeribe, Anthony C.; Ha, Chang Hyon; Hahn, Insik; Hubbard, Antonia J. F.; Jeon, Eunju; Jo, Jay Hyun; Joo, Hanwool; Kang, Woon Gu; Kang, Woosik; Kauer, Matthew; Kim, Bonghee; Kim, Hongjoo; Kim, Hyounggyu; Kim, Kyungwon; Kim, Nam Young; Kim, Sun Kee; Kim, Yeongduk; Kim, Yong-Hamb; Ko, Young Ju; Kudryavtsev, Vitaly Y.; Lee, Hyun Su; Lee, Jaison; et al. (2018). "An experiment to search for dark-matter interactions using sodium iodide detectors". Nature. 564 (7734): 83–86. arXiv: 1906.01791 . Bibcode:2018Natur.564...83C. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0739-1. PMID   30518890. S2CID   54459495.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  26. ↑ D. Buttazzo; et al. (2020). "Annual modulations from secular variations: relaxing DAMA?". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2020 (4): 137. arXiv: 2002.00459 . Bibcode:2020JHEP...04..137B. doi:10.1007/JHEP04(2020)137. S2CID   211010848.
  27. ↑ Adhikari, G.; Carlin, N.; Choi, J. J.; Choi, S.; Ezeribe, A. C.; Franca, L. E.; Ha, C.; Hahn, I. S.; Hollick, S. J.; Jeon, E. J.; Jo, J. H.; Joo, H. W.; Kang, W. G.; Kauer, M.; Kim, B. H. (2023). "An induced annual modulation signature in COSINE-100 data by DAMA/LIBRA's analysis method". Scientific Reports. 13 (1): 4676. arXiv: 2208.05158 . Bibcode:2023NatSR..13.4676A. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31688-4. PMC   10033922 . PMID   36949218.
  28. ↑ Castelvecchi, Davide (2022-08-16). "Notorious dark-matter signal could be due to analysis error". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-02222-9. PMID   35974221. S2CID   251624302.
  29. ↑ "ANAIS Experiment | Universidad de Zaragoza".
  30. ↑ Amare, J.; et al. (2021). "Annual modulation results from three-year exposure of ANAIS-112". Physical Review D. 103 (10): 102005. arXiv: 2103.01175 . Bibcode:2021PhRvD.103j2005A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.103.102005. S2CID   232092298.
  31. ↑ Adhikari, Govinda; de Souza, Estella B.; Carlin, Nelson; Choi, Jae Jin; Choi, Seonho; Djamal, Mitra; Ezeribe, Anthony C.; França, Luis E.; Ha, Chang Hyon; Hahn, In Sik; Jeon, Eunju (2021-11-12). "Strong constraints from COSINE-100 on the DAMA dark matter results using the same sodium iodide target". Science Advances. 7 (46): eabk2699. arXiv: 2104.03537 . Bibcode:2021SciA....7.2699A. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abk2699. ISSN   2375-2548. PMC   8580298 . PMID   34757778.
  32. ↑ "Is the end in sight for famous dark matter claim?". www.science.org. Retrieved 2021-12-29.
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