Speaker
Description
The direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter (DM) has received increased interest in the last few years. Recent proposals for experimental ideas using DM-electron scattering have opened up previously unexplored, but theoretically well-motivated, regions of parameter space. As these experiments increase their cross-section reach, they will start to become sensitive to astrophysical neutrinos. The coherent scattering of neutrinos can mimic a DM signal, and for experiments without directional sensitivity, is indistinguishable from DM. In this talk, I will present the minimum cross-sections for which one can distinguish between neutrino and DM signals, for a variety of materials. These results will have important implications for experiments that can probe sub-GeV DM-electron scattering such as SENSEI and SuperCDMS.
