Browsing by Author "Dutta, Bhaskar"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Thumbnail Image
    Axionlike Particles at Future Neutrino Experiments: Closing the Cosmological Triangle
    Brdar, Vedran; Dutta, Bhaskar; Jang, Wooyoung; Kim, Doojin; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra; Thompson, Adrian; Yu, Jaehoon (2021-05-17)
    Axionlike particles (ALPs) provide a promising direction in the search for new physics, while a wide range of models incorporate ALPs. We point out that future neutrino experiments, such as DUNE, possess competitive sensitivity to ALP signals. The high-intensity proton beam impinging on a target can not only produce copious amounts of neutrinos, but also cascade photons that are created from charged particle showers stopping in the target. Therefore, ALPs interacting with photons can be produced (often energetically) with high intensity via the Primakoff effect and then leave their signatures at the near detector through the inverse Primakoff scattering or decays to a photon pair. Moreover, the high-capability near detectors allow for discrimination between ALP signals and potential backgrounds, improving the signal sensitivity further. We demonstrate that a DUNE-like detector can explore a wide range of parameter space in ALP-photon coupling g(a gamma) vs ALP mass m(a), including some regions unconstrained by existing bounds; the "cosmological triangle" will be fully explored and the sensitivity limits would reach up to m(a) similar to 3-4 GeV and down to g(a gamma) similar to 10(-8) GeV-1.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Bounds on cosmic ray-boosted dark matter in simplified models and its corresponding neutrino-floor
    Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Newstead, Jayden L.; Shoemaker, Ian M. (2020-06-15)
    We study direct detection bounds on cosmic ray-upscattered dark matter in simplified models including light mediators. We find that the energy dependence in the scattering cross section is significant, and produces stronger bounds than previously found (which assumed constant cross sections) by many orders of magnitude at low dark matter mass. Finally, we compute the "neutrino-floor" that will limit future direct detection searches for cosmic ray-upscattered dark matter. While we focus on vector interactions for illustration, we emphasize that the energy dependence is critical in determining accurate bounds on any particle physics model of dark matter-cosmic ray interactions from experimental data on this scenario.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Cosmic-ray upscattered inelastic dark matter
    Bell, Nicole F.; Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Ghosh, Sumit; Kumar, Jason; Newstead, Jayden L.; Shoemaker, Ian M. (American Physical Society, 2021-10-21)
    Light nonrelativistic components of the galactic dark matter halo elude direct detection constraints because they lack the kinetic energy to create an observable recoil. However, cosmic rays can upscatter dark matter to significant energies, giving direct detection experiments access to previously unreachable regions of parameter space at very low dark matter mass. In this work we extend the cosmic-ray dark matter formalism to models of inelastic dark matter and show that previously inaccessible regions of the mass-splitting p ammeter space can be probed. Conventional direct detection of nonrelativistic halo dark matter is limited to mass splittings of delta similar to 10 keV and is highly mass dependent. We find that including the effect of cosmic-ray upscattering can extend the reach to mass splittings of delta similar to 100 MeV and maintain that reach at much lower dark matter mass.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Extending the reach of leptophilic boson searches at DUNE and MiniBooNE with bremsstrahlung and resonant production
    Capozzi, Francesco; Dutta, Bhaskar; Gurung, Gajendra; Jang, Wooyoung; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Thompson, Adrian; Yu, Jaehoon (American Physical Society, 2021-12-10)
    New gauge bosons coupling to leptons are simple and well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. We study the sensitivity to gauged L-mu- L-e, L-e - L-tau and L-mu- L-tau both with the existing beam dump mode data of MiniBooNE and with the DUNE near detector. We find that including bremsstrahlung and resonant production of Z' which decays to e(+/-) and mu(+/-) final states leads to a significant improvement in existing bounds, especially for L-mu- L-e and L-e - L-tau for DUNE while competitive constraints can be achieved with the existing data from the MiniBooNE's beam dump run.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Gamma ray signals from cosmic ray scattering on axionlike particles
    Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Newstead, Jayden L.; Rodriguez, Alejandro; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra; Arellano, Natalia Tapia (2021-09-28)
    Dark matter (DM) may be comprised of axionlike particles (ALPs) with couplings to photons and the standard model fermions. In this paper, we study photon signals arising from cosmic ray (CR) electron scattering on background ALPs. For a range of masses we find that these bounds can place competitive new constraints on the ALP-electron coupling, although in many models lifetime constraints may supersede these bounds. In addition to current Fermi constraints, we also consider future e-Astrogram bounds which will have greater sensitivity to ALP-CR induced gamma-rays.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Present and future status of light dark matter models from cosmic-ray electron upscattering
    Dent, James B.; Dutta, Bhaskar; Newstead, Jayden L.; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Arellano, Natalia Tapia (2021-05-18)
    Nonrelativistic dark matter (DM) can be accelerated by scattering on high-energy cosmic-ray (CR) electrons. This process leads to a subpopulation of relativistic or semirelativistic DM which extends the experimental reach for direct detection in the sub-GeV mass regime. In this paper we examine the current and future potential of this mechanism for constraining models of light dark matter. In particular, we find that Super-Kamiokande and XENON1T data can already provide leading constraints on the flux of dark matter that has been accelerated to high energies from cosmic ray electrons. We also examine future projected sensitivities for DUNE and Hyper-K, and contrary to previous findings, conclude that DUNE will be able supersede Super-K bounds on cosmic-ray upscattered DM for a variety of DM models.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Probing new physics at DUNE operating in a beam-dump mode
    Brdar, Vedran; Dutta, Bhaskar; Jang, Wooyoung; Kim, Doojin; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra; Thompson, Adrian; Yu, Jaehoon (American Physical Society, 2023-03)
    In this work we demonstrate that a future accelerator-based neutrino experiment such as DUNE can greatly increase its sensitivity to a variety of new physics scenarios by operating in a mode where the proton beam impinges on a beam dump. We consider two new physics scenarios, namely light dark matter and axionlike particles and show that by utilizing a dump mode at a DUNE-like experiment, unexplored new regions of parameter space can be probed with an exposure of only 3 months with half of its expected initial beam power. Specifically, targetless configuration of future high intensity neutrino experiments will probe the parameter space for thermal relic dark matter as well as the QCD axion. The strength of such a configuration in the context of new physics searches stems from the fact that the neutrino flux is significantly reduced compared to that of the target, resulting in much smaller backgrounds from neutrino interactions. We have verified this in detail by explicitly computing neutrino fluxes which we make publicly available in order to facilitate further studies with a targetless configuration.