JUNO sensitivity to the annihilation of MeV dark matter in the galactic halo
A. C. Abusleme Hoffman, Thomas Adam, S. Ahmad, Rizwan Ahmed, S. Aiello, M. Akram, Abid Aleem, Tsagkarakis Alexandros, Fengpeng An, Qi An, Giuseppe Andronico, Н. Анфимов, V. Antonelli, Tatiana Antoshkina, Burin Asavapibhop, J. P. A. M. de André, Didier Auguste, Weidong Bai, Nikita Balashov, W. Baldini, Andrea Barresi, D. Basilico, E. Baussan, M. Bellato, Antonio Bergnoli, Thilo Birkenfeld, Sylvie Blin, David Blum, S.C. Blyth, Anastasia Bolshakova, M. Bongrand, Clément Bordereau, D. Breton, A. Brigatti, R. Brugnera, Riccardo Bruno, A. Budano, José Busto, J. Busenitz, Barbara Caccianiga, Hao Cai, X. Cai, Yanke Cai, Zhiyan Cai, Riccardo Callegari, Antonio Cammi, Agustín Campeny, Chuanya Cao, Guofu Cao, Jun Cao, R. Caruso, C. Cerna, Chi Hou Chan, J. F. Chang, Yun Sil Chang, Guo-Ming Chen, Pingping Chen, Po-An Chen, Shaomin Chen, Xurong Chen, Yixue Chen, Yu Chen, Zhiyuan Chen, Zikang Chen, Jie Cheng, Yaping Cheng, Yu Cheng, Alexey Chetverikov, D. Chiesa, P. Chimenti, Ziliang Chu, A. Chukanov, Gérard Claverie, Catia Clementi, Barbara Clerbaux, Selma Conforti Di Lorenzo, Daniele Corti, F. Dal Corso, Olivia Dalager, C. De La Taille, Zhi Deng, Ziyan Deng, Wilfried Depnering, Marco Diaz, Xuefeng Ding, Yayun Ding, Bayu Dirgantara, Sergey Dmitrievsky, Tadeáš Dohnal, Dmitry Dolzhikov, Georgy Donchenko, J. Dong, E. Doroshkevich, Wei Dou, M. Dracos, Frédéric Druillole, Ran Du, Shuxian Du, S. Dusini, Martin Dvořák
Abstract
Abstract We discuss JUNO sensitivity to the annihilation of MeV dark matter in the galactic halo via detecting inverse beta decay reactions of electron anti-neutrinos resulting from the annihilation. We study possible backgrounds to the signature, including the reactor neutrinos, diffuse supernova neutrino background, charged- and neutral-current interactions of atmospheric neutrinos, backgrounds from muon-induced fast neutrons and cosmogenic isotopes. A fiducial volume cut, as well as the pulse shape discrimination and the muon veto are applied to suppress the above backgrounds. It is shown that JUNO sensitivity to the thermally averaged dark matter annihilation rate in 10 years of exposure would be significantly better than the present-day best limit set by Super-Kamiokande and would be comparable to that expected by Hyper-Kamiokande.