Light dark matter in neutrino beams: Production modeling and scattering signatures at MiniBooNE, T2K, and SHiP

Abstract

We analyze the prospects for detection of light sub-GeV dark matter produced in experiments designed to study the properties of neutrinos, such as MiniBooNE, T2K, SHiP, DUNE etc. We present an improved production model, when dark matter couples to hadronic states via a dark photon or baryonic vector mediator, incorporating bremsstrahlung of the dark vector. In addition to elastic scattering, we also study signatures of light dark matter undergoing deep inelastic or quasielastic $\mathrm{NC}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$-like scattering in the detector producing neutral pions, which for certain experiments may provide the best sensitivity. Supplemental Material provides extensive documentation for a publicly available simulation tool BdNMC that can be applied to determine the hidden sector dark matter production and scattering rate at a range of proton fixed target experiments.