Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada.
Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Dec 21;109(25):251302. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.251302. Epub 2012 Dec 20.
If the neutral component of weak-scale dark matter is accompanied by a charged excitation separated by a mass gap of less than ~20 MeV, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can form stable bound states with nuclei. We show that the recent progress in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay sets the first direct constraint on the exoergic reaction of WIMP-nucleus bound state formation. We calculate the rate for such a process in representative models and show that the double-beta decay experiments provide unique sensitivity to a large fraction of parameter space of the WIMP doublet model, complementary to constraints imposed by cosmology and direct collider searches.
如果弱尺度暗物质的中性成分伴随着一个质量间隙小于约 20 MeV 的带电激发，那么弱相互作用重粒子（WIMP）可以与原子核形成稳定的束缚态。我们表明，最近在寻找中微子无双β衰变的实验中取得的进展为 WIMP-核束缚态形成的放能反应设定了第一个直接限制。我们在代表性模型中计算了这个过程的速率，并表明双β衰变实验对 WIMP 双重模型的大部分参数空间具有独特的灵敏度，与宇宙学和直接对撞机搜索施加的限制互补。
