Search for bosonic superweakly interacting massive dark matter particles with the XMASS-I detector

• Published in: Physical review letters 2014-09, Vol.113 (12), p.121301-121301, Article 121301
• Main Authors: Abe, K, Hieda, K, Hiraide, K, Hirano, S, Kishimoto, Y, Ichimura, K, Kobayashi, K, Moriyama, S, Nakagawa, K, Nakahata, M, Ogawa, H, Oka, N, Sekiya, H, Shinozaki, A, Suzuki, Y, Takeda, A, Takachio, O, Umemoto, D, Yamashita, M, Yang, B S, Tasaka, S, Liu, J, Martens, K, Hosokawa, K, Miuchi, K, Murata, A, Onishi, Y, Otsuka, Y, Takeuchi, Y, Kim, Y H, Lee, K B, Lee, M K, Lee, J S, Fukuda, Y, Itow, Y, Masuda, K, Takiya, H, Uchida, H, Kim, N Y, Kim, Y D, Kusaba, F, Nishijima, K, Fujii, K, Murayama, I, Nakamura, S
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bosons; Constants; Dark matter; Detectors; Equivalence; Mathematical analysis; Rest; Vectors (mathematics)
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.121301

Bosonic superweakly interacting massive particles (super-WIMPs) are a candidate for warm dark matter. With the absorption of such a boson by a xenon atom, these dark matter candidates would deposit an energy equivalent to their rest mass in the detector. This is the first direct detection experiment exploring the vector super-WIMPs in the mass range between 40 and 120 keV. With the use of 165.9 day of data, no significant excess above background was observed in the fiducial mass of 41 kg. The present limit for the vector super-WIMPs excludes the possibility that such particles constitute all of dark matter. The absence of a signal also provides the most stringent direct constraint on the coupling constant of pseudoscalar super-WIMPs to electrons. The unprecedented sensitivity was achieved exploiting the low background at a level 10(-4)  kg-1 keVee-1 day-1 in the detector.