Constraints on Dark Matter with a moderately large and velocity-dependent DM-nucleon cross-section
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We derive constraints on a possible velocity-dependent DM-nucleon scattering cross section, for Dark Matter in the 10 MeV -- 100 GeV mass range, using the XQC, DAMIC, and CRESST 2017 Surface Run experiments. We report the limits on cross sections of the form $\sigma=\sigma_0\,v^n$, for a range of velocity dependencies with $n\in\{-4,-2,-1,0,1,2\}$. We point out the need to measure the efficiency with which nuclear recoil energy in the sub-keV range thermalizes, rather than being stored as Frenkel pairs in the semi-conductor lattice. The possibility of a significant inefficiency leaves open a considerable `hole' in the limits for mass in the $\sim$ 0.2 -- 2 GeV range, which XQC and CRESST can potentially fill when the thermalization efficiency is measured. We call attention to the asymmetry between a conventional lower limit cross section and the `upper-reach cross section' imposed by attenuation in an overburden -- an upper boundary being extremely sharp but quite insensitive to the statistics of the experiment. Considering the recent interest to use dark matter-baryon interaction with velocity dependence $n=-4$ to explain the EDGES 21 cm anomaly, we also derive the limits on milli-charged DM that scatters off protons and electrons under a Coulomb-like interaction. We find that much but not all of the region of interest for the EDGES anomaly can be excluded.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".