Effect on Dark Matter Exclusion Limits from New Silicon Photoelectric Absorption Measurements

Kavli Affiliate: Blas Cabrera

| First 5 Authors: Belina von Krosigk, Matthew J. Wilson, Chris Stanford, Blas Cabrera, Robert Calkins

| Summary:

Recent breakthroughs in cryogenic silicon detector technology allow for the
observation of single electron-hole pairs released via particle interactions
within the target material. This implies sensitivity to energy depositions as
low as the smallest band gap, which is $sim1.2$ eV for silicon, and therefore
sensitivity to eV/$c^2$-scale bosonic dark matter and to thermal dark matter at
masses below 100 MeV/$c^2$. Various interaction channels that can probe the
lowest currently accessible masses in direct searches are related to standard
photoelectric absorption. In any of these respective dark matter signal models
any uncertainty on the photoelectric absorption cross section is propagated
into the resulting exclusion limit or into the significance of a potential
observation. Using first-time precision measurements of the photoelectric
absorption cross section in silicon recently performed at Stanford University,
this article examines the importance having accurate knowledge of this
parameter at low energies and cryogenic temperatures for these dark matter
searches.

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