First measurement of the absorption of $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$ nuclei in matter and impact on their propagation in the galaxy

The ALICE collaboration Acharya, Shreyasi ; Adamova, Dagmar ; Adler, Alexander ; et al.
Nature Phys. 19 (2023) 61-71, 2023.
Inspire Record 2026264 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.133480

In our Galaxy, light antinuclei composed of antiprotons and antineutrons can be produced through high-energy cosmic-ray collisions with the interstellar medium or could also originate from the annihilation of dark-matter particles that have not yet been discovered. On Earth, the only way to produce and study antinuclei with high precision is to create them at high-energy particle accelerators. Although the properties of elementary antiparticles have been studied in detail, the knowledge of the interaction of light antinuclei with matter is limited. We determine the disappearance probability of $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$ when it encounters matter particles and annihilates or disintegrates within the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. We extract the inelastic interaction cross section, which is then used as input to calculations of the transparency of our Galaxy to the propagation of $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$ stemming from dark-matter annihilation and cosmic-ray interactions within the interstellar medium. For a specific dark-matter profile, we estimate a transparency of about 50%, whereas it varies with increasing $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$ momentum from 25% to 90% for cosmic-ray sources. The results indicate that $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$ nuclei can travel long distances in the Galaxy, and can be used to study cosmic-ray interactions and dark-matter annihilation.

21 data tables

Raw primary antihelium3-to-helium3 ratio as a function of the momentum p_primary.

Raw primary antihelium3-to-helium3 ratio from Geant4-based MC simulations as a function of the momentum p_primary with default sigma_inel(3Hebar).

Raw primary antihelium3-to-helium3 ratio from Geant4-based MC simulations as a function of the momentum p_primary with sigma_inel(3Hebar)x0.5.

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A low-mass dark matter search using ionization signals in XENON100

The XENON collaboration Aprile, E. ; Aalbers, J. ; Agostini, F. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.D 94 (2016) 092001, 2016.
Inspire Record 1463250 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.78548

We perform a low-mass dark matter search using an exposure of 30\,kg$\times$yr with the XENON100 detector. By dropping the requirement of a scintillation signal and using only the ionization signal to determine the interaction energy, we lowered the energy threshold for detection to 0.7\,keV for nuclear recoils. No dark matter detection can be claimed because a complete background model cannot be constructed without a primary scintillation signal. Instead, we compute an upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section under the assumption that every event passing our selection criteria could be a signal event. Using an energy interval from 0.7\,keV to 9.1\,keV, we derive a limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section that excludes WIMPs with a mass of 6\,GeV/$c^2$ above $1.4 \times 10^{-41}$\,cm$^2$ at 90\% confidence level.

1 data table

WIMP exclusion limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section at 90% confidence level.