Dark matter had put to shame every type of detector designed to find it. Due to its dominant gravitational footprint in the Universe, dark matter represents approximately 85 % of the total mass up there. The only thing is that we still couldn’t figure out the dark matter’s composition.
Lots of researches that searches for dark matter has hunted for any signals of dark matter particles crashing into atomic nuclei through a process dubbed the scattering. That process can also produce small flashes of light and other waves in those interactions. It wasn’t until now that physicists finally found something.
Recent research claims new ways of finding the signals of dark matter particles that have their energy absorbed by atomic nuclei. The absorption method could offer an affected atom a kick that makes it to discharge a lighter, energized particle, such as an electron. It might make other types of signs, too, but only depending on the dark matter’s particle. The research centers more on those situations where an electron or neutrino is dismissed as the dark matter article hits an atom’s nucleus.
The team of physicists, also suggested that new searches in initially gathered particle detector data might change these overlooked dark matter signals. They also analyzed the WIMP paradigm and a way to build it into the Standard Model.
Dark Matter and Its Puzzling Condition
“It’s easy, with small modifications to the WIMP paradigm, to accommodate a whole different type of signal,” detailed Jeff Dror, a postdoctoral researcher and the lead author of the research.
The team suggests that the range of new signals they are examining opens up a “sea” of dark matter particle circumstances: specifically as-yet-unidentified fermions with masses lower than the usual range considered for WIMPs. They could be close relatives of sterile neutrinos, for instance. Physicists found the absorption processes, dubbed “neutral current,” in which nuclei in the detector compound recoil, or get jolted by their strike with dark matter particles, resulting in various energy signatures.
Also, those found as “charged current,” which can develop many signals as a dark matter particle hits a nucleus, resulting in recoil and the discharge of an electron.
