Neutrino floor calculation: a background for the direct detection of wimps

Abstract

Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEνNS) is a process that constitutes an impor tant background source for the direct detection of WIMPs, one of the most attractive dark matter candidates. In this work, our goal is to study minima of the cross sections for WIMP-Nucleus colli sions that would stand out over the neutrino floor, focusing on detectors that include Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chambers. We present the CEνNS mechanism, and explain why it produces a signal that can be confused with the one expected from WIMPs. Then, we examine the neutrino sources in our universe, and the fluxes of neutrinos that each of them produce in order to determine the background they constitute for WIMP detection. To compare the number of events expected from neutrinos with the number of events that WIMPs could provide, we calculate the neutrino-nucleus and WIMP-nucleus cross-sections and collision rates. Lastly, we compute the WIMP-nucleus cross section to WIMP mass relation, for several energy thresholds that a detector may have, that would be needed to successfully detect dark matter with a 90% confidence level.