HEP2026: 42nd Conference on Recent Developments in High Energy Physics and Cosmology [NTUA] Jul 8 – 11, 2026

New Physics in the Neutrino Fog Era of Dark Matter Direct Detection

Jul 9, 2026, 3:40 PM

20m

Main Hall (Level 1) (National Technical University of Athens)

Astroparticle and rare event searches

Speaker

Dr Dimitrios Papoulias (IFIC (CSIC/Valencia U.))

Description

The observation of solar $^8$B neutrinos in ton-scale xenon dark matter detectors has marked the beginning of the \emph{neutrino fog} era, establishing these experiments as complementary probes of neutrino and dark matter physics. In this talk, I will discuss recent constraints on new physics obtained from coherent elastic neutrino--nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) measurements in XENONnT, PandaX-4T, and LUX-ZEPLIN [1]. I will present limits on non-standard neutrino interactions, with particular emphasis on scenarios involving light and heavy mediators. I will further show how such interactions can significantly modify the morphology of the neutrino fog, with important consequences for future direct detection searches [2]. Finally, I will outline new prospects within the DarkSPHERE programme for constraining effective field theory operators governing WIMP--nucleus interactions [3].

References

[1] V. De Romeri, D.K. Papoulias, F. Pompa, G. Sanchez Garcia, C.A. Ternes, Testing light and heavy vector mediators with solar CEνNS measurements, arXiv.org/pdf/2603.00554 [hep-ph], JCAP accepted
[2] V. De Romeri, A. Majumdar, D.K. Papoulias, R. Srivastava, New light mediators and the neutrino fog: Implications from XENONnT nuclear recoil data, JCAP 05 (2026) 093
[3] DarkSPHERE collaboration, in preparation

Presentation materials

Papoulias_HEP2026.pdf