The hunt for sub-GeV dark matter at neutrino facilities: a survey of past and present experiments

Understand

We survey the sensitivity of past and present neutrino experiments to MeV-GeV scale dark matter, and find that these experiments possess novel sensitivity that has not yet fully explored.

• NO$\nu$A and BEBC are found to rule out the scalar thermal target for dark matter masses between 10 MeV to 100 MeV with existing data, while CHARM-II and MINER$\nu$A place somewhat weaker limits.
• These limits can be dramatically improved by off-axis searches using the NuMI beamline and the MicroBooNE, MiniBooNE or ICARUS detectors, and can even begin to probe the Majorana thermal target.
• We conclude that past and present neutrino facilities can search for light dark matter concurrently with their neutrino program and reach a competitive sensitivity to proposed future experiments.