The search for physics Beyond the Standard Model using the Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory

ORAL

Abstract

The Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills (CCM) experiment is a 10-ton liquid argon (LAr) detector located at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and has collected data in search of evidence for light dark matter (LDM) starting with the engineering run in 2019. Analysis of the 6-week engineering run (CCM120) shows that the detector is competitive at setting limits in the vector portal dark matter model, and at the same time excludes LDM masses (9 – 50 MeV) in the leptophobic dark matter model. The operation of CCM is strictly light based with a threshold of 50 keV and uses coherent elastic scattering off argon nuclei to detect LDM.

The upgraded CCM detector (CCM200) is now fitted with 200 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) along with increased shielding to further limit backgrounds and improve overall sensitivity. The upgraded CCM detector can explore Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics such as dark sector solutions to the MiniBooNE excess due to possibly long-lived particles resulting from neutral and charged meson decays. Another area of exploration includes the search for axionlike particles (ALPs) where ALPs coupled primarily to photons can give rise to a gamma ray signal in the CCM detector. The enhanced sensitivity of the CCM detector will improve our ability to explore ALP-photon and ALP-electron couplings.

*We thank the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory LDRD program, and support from Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigacion e Innovacion Technologica and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (PAPIIT-UNAM) Grants No. IT100420, No. NSF-1801996 and No. DOE-HEP DESC0009824. We also wish to acknowledge support from the LANSCE Lujan Center and LANL's Accelerator Operations and Technology Division. This research used resources provided by the LANL Institutional Computing Program, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract No. 89233218CNA000001.

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Publication: First dark matter search results from Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills, Physical Review D 106, 012001 (2022)
First Leptophobic Dark Matter Search from the Coherent-CAPTAIN-Mills Liquid Argon Detector, Physical Review Letters 129, 021801 (2022)
Solutions to the MiniBooNE Anomaly from New Physics in Charged Meson Decays, Physical Review Letters 129, 111803 (2022)
Prospects for detecting axionlike particles at the Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills experiment, Physical Review D 107, 095036 (2023)
Testing meson portal dark sector solutions to the MiniBooNE Anomaly at the Coherent CAPTAIN Mills experiment, Physical Review D 109, 095017 (2024)

Presenters

  • Darrel Smith

    • Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott

Authors

  • Darrel Smith

    • Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott