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Dark matter from down under

It isn’t often I get to plug an important experiment in high-energy physics located within my own vast country so I thought I would take this opportunity to do just that. That’s right – the land of the kangaroo, meat-pie and infamously slow internet (68th in the world if I recall) has joined the hunt for the ever elusive dark matter particle.

By now you have probably heard that about 85% of the universe is all made out of stuff that is dark. Searching for this invisible matter has not been an easy task, however the main strategy has involved detections of faint signals of dark matter scattering off nuclei that constantly pass through the Earth unimpeded. Up until now, the main contenders for these dark matter direct detection experiments have been performed above the equator.

The SABRE (Sodium-iodide with Active Background REjection) collaboration plans to operate two detectors – one in my home-state of Victoria, Australia at SUPL (Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory) and another in the northern hemisphere at LNGS, Italy. The choice to run two experiments in seperate hemispheres has the goal of potentially removing systematic effects inherent in the seasonal rotation of the Earth. In particular – any of these seasonal effects should be opposite in phase, whilst the dark matter signal should remain the same. This actually takes us to a novel dark matter direct detection search method known as annual modulation, which has been added to the spotlight through the DAMA/LIBRA scintillation detector underground the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.

Around the world, around the world

Figure 1: When the Earth rotates around the sun, relative to the Milky Way’s DM halo, it experiences a larger interaction when it moves “head-on” with the wind. Taken from
arXiv:1209.3339.

The DAMA/LIBRA experiment superseded the DAMA/NaI experiment which observed the dark matter halo over a period of 7 annual cycles ranging from 1995 to 2002. The idea is quite simple really. Current theory suggests that the Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter with our solar system casually floating by experiencing some “flux” of particles that pass through us all year round. However, current and past theory (up to a point) also suggest the Earth does a full revolution around the sun in a year’s time. In fact, with respect to this dark matter “wind”, the Earth’s relative velocity would be added on its approach, occurring around the start of June and then subtracted on its recession, in December. When studying detector interactions with the DM particles, one would then expect the rates to be higher in the middle of the year and of course lower at the end – hence a modulation (annually). Up to here, annual modulation results would be quite suitably model-independent and so wouldn’t depend on your particular choice of DM particle – so long as it has some interaction with the detector.

The DAMA collaboration, having reported almost 14 years of annual modulation results in total, claim evidence for a picture quite consistent with what would be expected for a range of dark matter scenarios in the energy range of 2-6 keV. This however has long been in tension with the wider community of detection for WIMP dark matter. Those such as XENON (which incidentally is also located in the Gran Sasso mountains) and CDMS have reported no detection of dark matter in the same ranges as that which the DAMA collaboration claimed to have seen them. Although these employ quite different materials such as (you guessed it) liquid xenon in the case of XENON and cryogenically cooled semiconductors at CDMS.

Figure 2: Annual modulation results from DAMA. Could this be the presence of WIMP dark matter or some other seasonal effect? From the DAMA Collaboration.

Yes, there is also the COSINE-100 experiment, using the same materials as those in DAMA (that is, sodium iodide), based in South Korea. And yes, they also published a letter to Nature claiming their results to be in “severe tension” with those of the DAMA annual modulation signal – under the assumption of WIMP interactions that are spin-independent with the detector material. However, this does not totally rule out the observation of dark matter by DAMA – just the fact that it is very unlikely to correspond to the gold-standard WIMP in a standard halo scenario. According to the collaboration, it will certainly take years more data collection to know for sure. But that’s where SABRE comes in!

As above, so below

Before the arrival of SABRE’s twin detectors in both the northern and southern hemispheres, the first phase known as the PoP (Proof of Principle) must be performed to analyze the entire search strategy and evaluate the backgrounds present in the crystal structures. Certainly, another feature of SABRE is a crystal background rate quite below that of DAMA/LIBRA using ultra-radiopure sodium iodide crystals. With the estimated current background and 50 kg of detector material, it is expected that the DAMA/LIBRA signal should be able to be independently verified (or refuted) in a matter of 3 years.

If you asked me, there is something a little special about an experiment operating on the frontier of fundamental physics in a small regional Victorian town with a population just over 6000 known for an active gold mining community and the oldest running foot race in Australia. Of course, Stawell features just the right environment to shield the detector from the relentless bombardment of cosmic rays on the Earth’s surface – and that’s why it is located 1 km underground. In fact, radiation contamination is such a prevalent issue for these sensitive detectors that everything from the concrete to the metal bolts that go in them must first be tested – and all this at the same time as the mine is still being operated.

Now, not only is SABRE experiments running in both Australia and Italy, but they actually comprise a collaboration of physicists also from the UK and the USA. But most importantly (for me, anyway) – this is the southern hemisphere’s very first dark matter detector – a great milestone and a fantastic opportunity to put Aussies in the pilot’s seat to uncover one of nature’s biggest mysteries. But for now, crack open a cold one – footy’s almost on!

Figure 3: The SABRE collaboration operates internationally with detectors in the northern and southern hemispheres. Taken from GSSI.

References and Further Reading

  1. The SABRE dark matter experiment: https://sabre.lngs.infn.it/.
  2. The COSINE-100 experiment summarizing the annual modulation technique: https://cosine.yale.edu/about-us/annual-modulation-dark-matter.
  3. The COSINE-100 Experiment search for dark matter in tension with that of the DAMA signal: arXiv:1906.01791.
  4. An overview of the SABRE experiment and its Proof of Principle (PoP) deployment: arXiv:1807.08073.

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Dark Matter Cookbook: Freeze-In

In my previous post, we discussed the features of dark matter freeze-out. The freeze-out scenario is the standard production mechanism for dark matter. There is another closely related mechanism though, the freeze-in scenario. This mechanism achieves the same results as freeze-out, but in a different way. Here are the ingredients we need, and the steps to make dark matter according to the freeze-in recipe [1].

Ingredients

  • Standard Model particles that will serve as a thermal bath, we will call these “bath particles.”
  • Dark matter (DM).
  • A bath-DM coupling term in your Lagrangian.

Steps

  1. Pre-heat your early universe to temperature T. This temperature should be much greater than the dark matter mass.
  2. Add in your bath particles and allow them to reach thermal equilibrium. This will ensure that the bath has enough energy to produce DM once we begin the next step.
  3. Starting at zero, increase the bath-DM coupling such that DM production is very slow. The goal is to produce the correct amount of dark matter after letting the universe cool. If the coupling is too small, we won’t produce enough. If the coupling is too high, we will end up making too much dark matter. We want to make just enough to match the observed amount today.
  4. Slowly decrease the temperature of the universe while monitoring the DM production rate. This step is analogous to allowing the universe to expand. At temperatures lower than the dark matter mass, the bath no longer has enough energy to produce dark matter. At this point, the amount of dark matter has “frozen-in,” there are no other ways to produce more dark matter.
  5. Allow your universe to cool to 3 Kelvin and enjoy. If all went well, we should have a universe at the present-day temperature, 3 Kelvin, with the correct density of dark matter, (0.2-0.6) GeV/cm^3 [2].

This process is schematically outlined in the figure below, adapted from [1].

Schematic comparison of the freeze-in (dashed) and freeze-out (solid) scenarios.

On the horizontal axis we have the ratio of dark matter mass to temperature. Earlier times are to the left and later times are to the right. On the vertical axis is the dark matter number-density per entropy-density. This quantity automatically scales the number-density to account for cooling effects as the universe expands. The solid black line is the amount of dark matter that remains in thermal equilibrium with the bath. For the freeze-out recipe, the universe started out with a large population of dark matter that was in thermal equilibrium with the bath. In the freeze-in recipe, the universe starts with little to no dark matter and it never reaches thermal equilibrium with the bath. The dashed (solid) colored lines are dark matter abundances in the freeze-in (out) scenarios. Observe that in the freeze-in scenario, the amount of dark matter increases as temperature decreases. In the freeze-out scenario, the amount of dark matter decreases as temperature decreases. Finally, the arrows indicate the effect of increasing the X-bath coupling. For freeze in, increasing this interaction leads to more dark matter but in freeze-out, increasing this coupling leads to less dark matter.

References

[1] – Freeze-In Production of FIMP Dark Matter. This is the paper outlining the freeze-in mechanism.

[2] – Using Gaia DR2 to Constrain Local Dark Matter Density and Thin Dark Disk. This is the most recent measurement of the local dark matter density according to the Particle Data Group.

[3] – Dark Matter. This is the Particle Data Group review of dark matter.

[A] – Cake Recipe in strange science units. This SixtySymbols video provided the inspiration for the format of this post.

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Three Birds with One Particle: The Possibilities of Axions

Title: “Axiogenesis”

Author: Raymond T. Co and Keisuke Harigaya

Reference: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.02080.pdf

On the laundry list of problems in particle physics, a rare three-for-one solution could come in the form of a theorized light scalar particle fittingly named after a detergent: the axion. Frank Wilczek coined this term in reference to its potential to “clean up” the Standard Model once he realized its applicability to multiple unsolved mysteries. Although Axion the dish soap has been somewhat phased out of our everyday consumer life (being now primarily sold in Latin America), axion particles remain as a key component of a physicist’s toolbox. While axions get a lot of hype as a promising dark matter candidate, and are now being considered as a solution to matter-antimatter asymmetry, they were originally proposed as a solution for a different Standard Model puzzle: the strong CP problem. 

The strong CP problem refers to a peculiarity of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), our theory of quarks, gluons, and the strong force that mediates them: while the theory permits charge-parity (CP) symmetry violation, the ardent experimental search for CP-violating processes in QCD has so far come up empty-handed. What does this mean from a physical standpoint? Consider the neutron electric dipole moment (eDM), which roughly describes the distribution of the three quarks comprising a neutron. Naively, we might expect this orientation to be a triangular one. However, measurements of the neutron eDM, carried out by tracking changes in neutron spin precession, return a value orders of magnitude smaller than classically expected. In fact, the incredibly small value of this parameter corresponds to a neutron where the three quarks are found nearly in a line. 

The classical picture of the neutron (left) looks markedly different from the picture necessitated by CP symmetry (right). The strong CP problem is essentially a question of why our mental image should look like the right picture instead of the left. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.02669.pdf

This would not initially appear to be a problem. In fact, in the context of CP, this makes sense: a simultaneous charge conjugation (exchanging positive charges for negative ones and vice versa) and parity inversion (flipping the sign of spatial directions) when the quark arrangement is linear results in a symmetry. Yet there are a few subtleties that point to the existence of further physics. First, this tiny value requires an adjustment of parameters within the mathematics of QCD, carefully fitting some coefficients to cancel out others in order to arrive at the desired conclusion. Second, we do observe violation of CP symmetry in particle physics processes mediated by the weak interaction, such as kaon decay, which also involves quarks. 

These arguments rest upon the idea of naturalness, a principle that has been invoked successfully several times throughout the development of particle theory as a hint toward the existence of a deeper, more underlying theory. Naturalness (in one of its forms) states that such minuscule values are only allowed if they increase the overall symmetry of the theory, something that cannot be true if weak processes exhibit CP-violation where strong processes do not. This puts the strong CP problem squarely within the realm of “fine-tuning” problems in physics; although there is no known reason for CP symmetry conservation to occur, the theory must be modified to fit this observation. We then seek one of two things: either an observation of CP-violation in QCD or a solution that sets the neutron eDM, and by extension any CP-violating phase within our theory, to zero.

This term in the QCD Lagrangian allows for CP symmetry violation. Current measurements place the value of \theta at no greater than 10^{-10}. In Peccei-Quinn symmetry, \theta is promoted to a field.

When such an expected symmetry violation is nowhere to be found, where is a theoretician to look for such a solution? The most straightforward answer is to turn to a new symmetry. This is exactly what Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn did in 1977, birthing the Peccei-Quinn symmetry, an extension of QCD which incorporates a CP-violating phase known as the \theta term. The main idea behind this theory is to promote \theta to a dynamical field, rather than keeping it a constant. Since quantum fields have associated particles, this also yields the particle we dub the axion. Looking back briefly to the neutron eDM picture of the strong CP problem, this means that the angular separation should also be dynamical, and hence be relegated to the minimum energy configuration: the quarks again all in a straight line. In the language of symmetries, the U(1) Peccei-Quinn symmetry is approximately spontaneously broken, giving us a non-zero vacuum expectation value and a nearly-massless Goldstone boson: our axion.

This is all great, but what does it have to do with dark matter? As it turns out, axions make for an especially intriguing dark matter candidate due to their low mass and potential to be produced in large quantities. For decades, this prowess was overshadowed by the leading WIMP candidate (weakly-interacting massive particles), whose parameter space has been slowly whittled down to the point where physicists are more seriously turning to alternatives. As there are several production-mechanisms in early universe cosmology for axions, and 100% of dark matter abundance could be explained through this generation, the axion is now stepping into the spotlight. 

This increased focus is causing some theorists to turn to further avenues of physics as possible applications for the axion. In a recent paper, Co and Harigaya examined the connection between this versatile particle and matter-antimatter asymmetry (also called baryon asymmetry). This latter term refers to the simple observation that there appears to be more matter than antimatter in our universe, since we are predominantly composed of matter, yet matter and antimatter also seem to be produced in colliders in equal proportions. In order to explain this asymmetry, without which matter and antimatter would have annihilated and we would not exist, physicists look for any mechanism to trigger an imbalance in these two quantities in the early universe. This theorized process is known as baryogenesis.

Here’s where the axion might play a part. The \theta term, which settles to zero in its possible solution to the strong CP problem, could also have taken on any value from 0 to 360 degrees very early on in the universe. Analyzing the axion field through the conjectures of quantum gravity, if there are no global symmetries then the initial axion potential cannot be symmetric [4]. By falling from some initial value through an uneven potential, which the authors describe as a wine bottle potential with a wiggly top, \theta would cycle several times through the allowed values before settling at its minimum energy value of zero. This causes the axion field to rotate, an asymmetry which could generate a disproportionality between the amounts of produced matter and antimatter. If the field were to rotate in one direction, we would see more matter than antimatter, while a rotation in the opposite direction would result instead in excess antimatter.

The team’s findings can be summarized in the plot above. Regions in purple, red, and above the orange lines (dependent upon a particular constant \xi which is proportional to weak scale quantities) signify excluded portions of the parameter space. The remaining white space shows values of the axion decay constant and mass where the currently measured amount of baryon asymmetry could be generated. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.02080.pdf

Introducing a third fundamental mystery into the realm of axions begets the question of whether all three problems (strong CP, dark matter, and matter-antimatter asymmetry) can be solved simultaneously with axions. And, of course, there are nuances that could make alternative solutions to the strong CP problem more favorable or other dark matter candidates more likely. Like most theorized particles, there are several formulations of axion in the works. It is then necessary to turn our attention to experiment to narrow down the possibilities for how axions could interact with other particles, determine what their mass could be, and answer the all-important question: if they exist at all. Consequently, there are a plethora of axion-focused experiments up and running, with more on the horizon, that use a variety of methods spanning several subfields of physics. While these results begin to roll in, we can continue to investigate just how many problems we might be able to solve with one adaptable, soapy particle.

Learn More:

  1. A comprehensive introduction to the strong CP problem, the axion solution, and other potential solutions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.02669.pdf 
  2. Axions as a dark matter candidate: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-other-dark-matter-candidate
  3. More information on matter-antimatter asymmetry and baryogenesis: https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2015/02/04/where-do-i-come-from/
  4. The quantum gravity conjectures that axiogenesis builds upon: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.05338
  5. An overview of current axion-focused experiments: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-nucl-102014-022120