First Search for Bosonic Superweakly Interacting Massive Particles with Masses up to 1 MeV/c2 with GERDA

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Contributors

  • GERDA collaboration - (Author)
  • Chair of Nuclear Physics
  • Technical University of Munich
  • Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Institute
  • National Institute for Nuclear Physics
  • RAS - Institute for Nuclear Research
  • University of Zurich
  • Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics
  • University of Milan - Bicocca
  • Alikhanov Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics
  • University of Padua
  • Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
  • Max Planck Institute for Physics (Werner Heisenberg Institute)
  • University of L'Aquila
  • University of Tübingen
  • European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute
  • TUD Dresden University of Technology

Abstract

We present the first search for bosonic superweakly interacting massive particles (super-WIMPs) as keV-scale dark matter candidates performed with the GERDA experiment. GERDA is a neutrinoless double-β decay experiment which operates high-purity germanium detectors enriched in Ge76 in an ultralow background environment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) of INFN in Italy. Searches were performed for pseudoscalar and vector particles in the mass region from 60 keV/c2 to 1 MeV/c2. No evidence for a dark matter signal was observed, and the most stringent constraints on the couplings of super-WIMPs with masses above 120 keV/c2 have been set. As an example, at a mass of 150 keV/c2 the most stringent direct limits on the dimensionless couplings of axionlike particles and dark photons to electrons of gae<3×10-12 and α′/α<6.5×10-24 at 90% credible interval, respectively, were obtained.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number011801
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume125
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jul 2020
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 32678643

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas