The environmental monitoring system at the COSINE-100 experiment

The COSINE-100 experiment is designed to test the DAMA experiment which claimed an observation of a dark matter signal from an annual modulation in their residual event rate. To measure the 1 %-level signal amplitude, it is crucial to control and monitor nearly all environmental quantities that might systematically mimic the signal. The environmental monitoring also helps ensure a stable operation of the experiment. Here, we describe the design and performance of the centralized environmental monitoring system for the COSINE-100 experiment.

Strong constraints from COSINE-100 on the DAMA dark matter results using the same sodium iodide target

It is a long-standing debate as to whether or not the annual modulation in the event rate observed by the DAMA sodium iodide experiment is caused by the interaction of dark matter particles. To resolve this issue, several groups have been working to develop new experiments with the aim of reproducing or refuting DAMA's results using the same sodium iodide target medium. The COSINE-100 experiment is one of these that is currently operating with 106 kg of low-background sodium iodide crystals at the Yangyang underground laboratory. Analysis of the initial 59.5 days of COSINE-100 data showed that the annual modulation signal reported by DAMA is inconsistent with explanation using spin-independent interaction of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a favored candidate of dark matter particles, with sodium or iodine nuclei in the context of the standard halo mode. However, this first result left open interpretations using certain alternative dark matter models, dark matter halo distributions, and detector responses that could allow room for consistency between DAMA and COSINE-100. Here we present new results from over 1.7 years of COSINE-100 operation with improved event selection and energy threshold reduced from 2 keV to 1 keV. We find an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity, sufficient for the first time to strongly constrain these alternative scenarios, as well as to further strengthen the previously observed inconsistency with the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent interaction hypothesis.

Precision Measurement Noise Asymmetry and Its Annual Modulation as a Dark Matter Signature

Dark matter may be composed of self-interacting ultralight quantum fields that form macroscopic objects. An example of which includes Q-balls, compact non-topological solitons predicted by a range of theories that are viable dark matter candidates. As the Earth moves through the galaxy, interactions with such objects may leave transient perturbations in terrestrial experiments. Here we propose a new dark matter signature: an asymmetry (and other non-Gaussianities) that may thereby be induced in the noise distributions of precision quantum sensors, such as atomic clocks, magnetometers, and interferometers. Further, we demonstrate that there would be a sizeable annual modulation in these signatures due to the annual variation of the Earth velocity with respect to dark matter halo. As an illustration of our formalism, we apply our method to 6 years of data from the atomic clocks on board GPS satellites and place constraints on couplings for macroscopic dark matter objects with radii R<104km, the region that is otherwise inaccessible using relatively sparse global networks.

DAMA/LIBRA–phase2 results and implications on several dark matter scenarios

The first DAMA/LIBRA–phase2 model-independent results (exposure: [Formula: see text], and software energy threshold at 1 keV). They further confirm — with high confidence level — the evidence already observed by DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA–phase1 on the basis of the exploited model-independent dark matter (DM) annual modulation signature. The total exposure of the three experiments above the 2 keV software energy threshold is [Formula: see text]. Here, several DM candidate particles and related scenarios are analyzed including the latest results. Thanks to the increased exposure and to the lower software energy threshold, corollary model-dependent analyses permit to significantly restrict the allowed regions for the parameters spaces of various dark matter candidates and astrophysical, particle and nuclear physics scenarios.

Generalized Lomb–Scargle analysis of $${^{123}\mathrm{I}}$$ and $${^{99\mathrm{m}}\mathrm{Tc}}$$ decay rate measurements

We apply the generalized Lomb–Scargle periodogram to the $${^{123}\text {I}}$$ 123 I and $${^{99\mathrm{m}}\text {Tc}}$$ 99 m Tc decay rate measurements based on data taken at the Bronson Methodist Hospital. The aim of this exercise was to carry out an independent search for sinusoidal modulation for these radionuclei (to complement the analysis in Borrello et al.) at frequencies for which other radionuclei have shown periodicities. We do not find such a modulation at any frequencies, including annual modulation or at frequencies associated with solar rotation. Our analysis codes and datasets have been made publicly available.

An independent search for annual modulation and its significance in ANAIS-112 data

We perform an independent search for sinusoidal-based modulation in the recently released ANAIS-112 data, which could be induced by dark matter scatterings. We then evaluate this hypothesis against the null hypothesis that the data contain only background, using four different model comparison techniques. These include frequentist, Bayesian, and two information theory-based criteria (Akaike and Bayesian information criteria). This analysis was done on both the residual data (by subtracting the exponential fit obtained from the ANAIS-112 Collaboration) as well as the total (non-background subtracted) data. We find that according to the Bayesian model comparison test, the null hypothesis of no modulation is decisively favored over a cosine-based annual modulation for the non-background subtracted dataset in the 2–6 keV energy range. None of the other model comparison tests decisively favor any one hypothesis over another. This is the first application of Bayesian and information theory techniques to test the annual modulation hypothesis in ANAIS-112 data, extending our previous work on the DAMA/LIBRA and COSINE-100 data. Our analysis codes have also been made publicly available.