Influence of NaI background and mass on testing the DAMA modulation

Madeleine J. Zurowski; Elisabetta Barberio

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-11062-w

2022 Impact factor 4.4

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2022) 82: 1122
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-11062-w

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Influence of NaI background and mass on testing the DAMA modulation

Madeleine J. Zurowski¹^,2^a and Elisabetta Barberio¹^,2

¹ School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
² ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, Parkville, Australia

^a madeleine.zurowski@unimelb.edu.au

Received: 29 July 2021
Accepted: 23 November 2022
Published online: 12 December 2022

Abstract

We present here the model dependent and independent sensitivity studies for NaI detectors designed to test the DAMA result, and compare the predicted limits from SABRE with the present performance of both ANAIS and COSINE. We find that the strongest discovery and exclusion limits are set by a detector with the lowest background (assuming equal live times), and also note that our method correctly computes the present exclusion limits previously published by ANAIS and COSINE. In particular, with a target mass of 50 kg and background rate of 0.36 cpd/kg/keV (after veto), SABRE will be able to exclude the DAMA signal with 3 confidence or ‘discover’ it with 5 confidence within 2 years. This strongly motivates the quest for ever lower backgrounds in NaI detectors.

© Crown 2022

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