ANAIS-112 sensitivity in the search for dark matter annual modulation

I. Coarasa; J. Amaré; S. Cebrián; C. Cuesta; E. García; M. Martínez; M. A. Oliván; Y. Ortigoza; A. Ortiz de Solórzano; J. Puimedón; A. Salinas; M. L. Sarsa; P. Villar; J. A. Villar

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6733-4

2021 Impact factor 4.991

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2019) 79: 233
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6733-4

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

ANAIS-112 sensitivity in the search for dark matter annual modulation

I. Coarasa¹^,2^*, J. Amaré¹^,2, S. Cebrián¹^,2, C. Cuesta¹^,2^,4, E. García¹^,2, M. Martínez¹^,2^,3, M. A. Oliván¹^,5, Y. Ortigoza¹^,2, A. Ortiz de Solórzano¹^,2, J. Puimedón¹^,2, A. Salinas¹^,2, M. L. Sarsa¹^,2, P. Villar¹^,2 and J. A. Villar¹^,2

¹ Grupo de Física Nuclear y Astropartículas, Universidad de Zaragoza, Calle Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009, Zaragoza, Spain
² Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc, Paseo de los Ayerbe s/n, 22880, Canfranc Estación, Huesca, Spain
³ Fundación Agencia Aragonesa para la Investigación y el Desarrollo, ARAID, Avenida de Ranillas 1-D, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain
⁴ Present address: Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, CIEMAT, 28040, Madrid, Spain
⁵ Present address: Centro de Investigación de Recursos y Consumos Energéticos, CIRCE, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain

^* e-mail: icoarasa@unizar.es

Received: 5 December 2018
Accepted: 28 February 2019
Published online: 13 March 2019

Abstract

The annual modulation measured by the DAMA/LIBRA experiment can be explained by the interaction of dark matter WIMPs in NaI(Tl) scintillator detectors. Other experiments, with different targets or techniques, exclude the region of parameters singled out by DAMA/LIBRA, but the comparison of their results relies on several hypotheses regarding the dark matter model. ANAIS-112 is a dark matter search with 112.5 kg of NaI(Tl) scintillators at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory (LSC) to test the DAMA/LIBRA result in a model independent way. We analyze its prospects in terms of the a priori critical and detection limits of the experiment. A simple figure of merit has been obtained to compare the different experiments looking for the annual modulation observed by DAMA/LIBRA. We conclude that after 5 years of measurement, ANAIS-112 can detect the annual modulation in the region compatible with the DAMA/LIBRA result.