Solar tachocline production of symmetrons yields a keV-scale flux at Earth whose absorption in xenon detectors provides new complementary bounds on symmetron parameter space.
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Direct detection of solar chameleons with electron recoil data from XENONnT
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abstract
We reassess prospects for direct detection of solar chameleons, in light of recent progress in modeling their production, and the availability of new XENONnT data. We show that the contribution from Primakoff production in the electric fields of electrons and ions dominates the electron recoil event rate, which is enhanced compared to earlier estimates based on magnetic conversion in the tachocline alone. We argue that the signal is governed by the effective coupling $\beta_{\text{eff}} \equiv \beta_{\gamma}M_e^{-4}$, which encodes the combined effects of production and detection, where $\beta_{\gamma}$ and $M_e$ are the chameleon-photon (conformal) coupling and chameleon-electron disformal coupling scale, respectively. Setting the height of the chameleon potential to the dark energy (DE) scale $\Lambda \simeq 2.4\,{\text{meV}}$, we show that XENONnT electron recoil data set the upper limit $\log_{10}\beta_{\text{eff}}<-6.9$. This limit is independent of the conformal matter coupling $\beta_m$ and index $n$, and applies to the whole class of inverse power-law chameleons, well beyond the $n=1$ case usually studied. We comment on how future multi-target experiments and lower-threshold analyses could distinguish solar chameleons from other light (pseudo)scalar particles such as axions. Our work demonstrates that existing dark matter direct detection experiments can probe regions of parameter space relevant to screened DE models, providing complementary tests to astrophysical and fifth-force searches at no additional experimental cost.
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Nonlinear dark-sector interaction models with a half-saturation sparseness scale are observationally preferred over their linear counterparts at >95% confidence for two of three cases.
Under standard recombination, phantom-crossing dynamical dark energy is preferred at ~97–98.5% probability; early-time fixes to the Hubble tension erase that preference while creating severe ω_m tension with CMB.
Non-thermal photon cascades via Compton reprocessing and positron annihilation in stars create a broad photon spectrum that substantially boosts photon-coupled WISP production, as shown for solar dark photons.
Three nonlinear interacting dark energy models with a saturation ('sparseness') scale are constrained against late-time cosmological data, showing mild preference for nonzero sparseness but no decisive improvement over ΛCDM.
citing papers explorer
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Probing Solar Symmetrons with Direct Detection
Solar tachocline production of symmetrons yields a keV-scale flux at Earth whose absorption in xenon detectors provides new complementary bounds on symmetron parameter space.
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Saturation Mechanisms in the Interacting Dark Sector
Nonlinear dark-sector interaction models with a half-saturation sparseness scale are observationally preferred over their linear counterparts at >95% confidence for two of three cases.
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Exploring the interplay of late-time dynamical dark energy and new physics before recombination
Under standard recombination, phantom-crossing dynamical dark energy is preferred at ~97–98.5% probability; early-time fixes to the Hubble tension erase that preference while creating severe ω_m tension with CMB.
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Enhanced Stellar Production of Weakly Interacting Slim Particles from Non-Thermal Nuclear Cascades
Non-thermal photon cascades via Compton reprocessing and positron annihilation in stars create a broad photon spectrum that substantially boosts photon-coupled WISP production, as shown for solar dark photons.
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Effective field theory interpretation of ATLAS measurements involving the Higgs boson, electroweak bosons and the top quark
Three nonlinear interacting dark energy models with a saturation ('sparseness') scale are constrained against late-time cosmological data, showing mild preference for nonzero sparseness but no decisive improvement over ΛCDM.
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