1. First Limit on the Direct Detection of Lightly Ionizing Particles for Electric Charge as Low as e/1000 with the Majorana Demonstrator.
- Author
-
Alvis SI, Arnquist IJ, Avignone FT, Barabash AS, Barton CJ, Bertrand FE, Brudanin V, Busch M, Buuck M, Caldwell TS, Chan YD, Christofferson CD, Chu PH, Cuesta C, Detwiler JA, Dunagan C, Efremenko Y, Ejiri H, Elliott SR, Gilliss T, Giovanetti GK, Green MP, Gruszko J, Guinn IS, Guiseppe VE, Haufe CR, Hehn L, Henning R, Hoppe EW, Howe MA, Konovalov SI, Kouzes RT, Lopez AM, Martin RD, Massarczyk R, Meijer SJ, Mertens S, Myslik J, O'Shaughnessy C, Othman G, Pettus W, Poon AWP, Radford DC, Rager J, Reine AL, Rielage K, Robertson RGH, Ruof NW, Shanks B, Shirchenko M, Suriano AM, Tedeschi D, Varner RL, Vasilyev S, Vorren K, White BR, Wilkerson JF, Wiseman C, Xu W, Yakushev E, Yu CH, Yumatov V, Zhitnikov I, and Zhu BX
- Abstract
The Majorana Demonstrator is an ultralow-background experiment searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay in ^{76}Ge. The heavily shielded array of germanium detectors, placed nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, also allows searches for new exotic physics. Free, relativistic, lightly ionizing particles with an electrical charge less than e are forbidden by the standard model but predicted by some of its extensions. If such particles exist, they might be detected in the Majorana Demonstrator by searching for multiple-detector events with individual-detector energy depositions down to 1 keV. This search is background-free, and no candidate events have been found in 285 days of data taking. New direct-detection limits are set for the flux of lightly ionizing particles for charges as low as e/1000.
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF