A Direct Search for Dark Matter with the Majorana Demonstrator
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 20, 2019
- Creator
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Vorren, Kristopher
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy
- Abstract
- The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is a neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment currently operating 4850 ft underground in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD. Sub-keV thresholds and excellent low-energy resolution are features of the p-type point-contact high-purity germanium detectors deployed by MAJORANA, making them ideal for use in direct dark matter searches when combined with MAJORANA’s ultra-low backgrounds. An analysis of data from a 2015 commissioning run of the DEMONSTRATOR with 478 kg d of exposure was performed to search for mono-energetic lines in the detectors’ energy-spectrum from bosonic dark matter absorption. No dark matter signature was found in the 5-100 keV range, and upper limits were placed on dark bosonic pseudoscalar and vector-electric couplings. The same analysis produced null results and upper limits for three additional rare-event searches: Pauli-Exclusion Principle violating decay, solar axions, and electron decay. Improvements made to MAJORANA since commissioning will result in increased sensitivity to rare-event searches in future analyses.
- Date of publication
- May 2017
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Wilkerson, John
- Engel, Jonathan
- Iliadis, Christian
- Clemens, Christopher
- Henning, Reyco
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2017
- Language
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