Characterization of the background spectrum in DAMIC at SNOLAB

We construct the first comprehensive radioactive background model for a dark matter search with charge-coupled devices (CCDs). We leverage the well-characterized depth and energy resolution of the DAMIC at SNOLAB detector and a detailed GEANT4-based particle-transport simulation to model both bulk and surface backgrounds from natural radioactivity down to 50  eVee. We fit to the energy and depth distributions of the observed ionization events to differentiate and constrain possible background sources, for example, bulk 3H from silicon cosmogenic activation and surface 210Pb from radon plate-out. We observe the bulk background rate of the DAMIC at SNOLAB CCDs to be as low as 3.1±0.6  counts kg−1 day−1 keV−1ee, making it the most sensitive silicon dark matter detector. Finally, we discuss the properties of a statistically significant excess of events over the background model with energies below 200  eVee.We are grateful to SNOLAB and its staff for support through underground space, logistical and technical services. SNOLAB operations are supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Province of Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, with underground access provided by Vale at the Creighton mine site. We acknowledge financial support from the following agencies and organizations: National Science Foundation through Grants No. NSF PHY-1912766 and NSF PHY-1806974; Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at The University of Chicago through an endowment from the Kavli Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant GBMF6210 to the University of Washington; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Contract No. DE-AC02- 07CH11359); Institut Lagrange de Paris Laboratoire d’Excellence (under Reference No. ANR-10-LABX-63) supported by French state funds managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche within the Investissements d’Avenir program under Reference No. ANR-11-IDEX0004-02; Swiss National Science Foundation through Grant No. 200021_153654 and via the Swiss Canton of Zurich; Project PID2019–109829GB-I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033; Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Grant No. 240666) and Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Acad´emico–Universidad Nacional Autónoma de M´exico (Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica Grants No. IB100413 and No. IN112213); STFC Global Challenges Research Fund (Foundation Awards Grant ST/R002908/1)

Results on Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from a 11 kg d Target Exposure of DAMIC at SNOLAB

Experimental efforts of the last decades have been unsuccessful in detecting WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) in the 10-to-104 GeV/c2 range, thus motivating the search for lighter dark matter. The DAMIC (DArk Matter In CCDs) at SNOLAB experiment aims for direct detection of light dark matter particles (mχ<10 GeV/c2) by means of CCDs (Charge-Coupled Devices). Fully-depleted 675 μm-thick CCDs are used to such end. The optimized readout noise and operation at cryogenic temperatures allow for a detection threshold of 50 eVee electron-equivalent energy. Focusing on nuclear and electronic scattering as potential detection processes, DAMIC has so far set competitive constraints on the detection of low mass WIMPs and hidden-sector particles. In this work, an 11 kg⋅ d exposure dataset is exploited to search for light WIMPs by building the first comprehensive radioactive background model for CCDs. Different background sources are discriminated making conjoint use of the spatial distribution and energy of ionization events, thereby constraining the amount of contaminants such as tritium from silicon cosmogenic activation and surface lead-210 from radon plate-out. Despite a conspicuous, statistically-significant excess of events below 200 eVee, this analysis places the strongest exclusion limit on the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section with a silicon target for mχ< 9 GeV/c2

Precision measurement of Compton scattering in silicon with a skipper CCD for dark matter detection

Experiments aiming to directly detect dark matter through particle recoils can achieve energy thresholds of O ( 10     eV ) . In this regime, ionization signals from small-angle Compton scatters of environmental γ rays constitute a significant background. Monte Carlo simulations used to build background models have not been experimentally validated at these low energies. We report a precision measurement of Compton scattering on silicon atomic shell electrons down to 23 eV. A skipper charge-coupled device with single-electron resolution, developed for the DAMIC-M experiment, was exposed to a 241 Am γ -ray source over several months. Features associated with the silicon K-, L 1 -, and L 2 , 3 -shells are clearly identified, and scattering on valence electrons is detected for the first time below 100 eV. We find that the relativistic impulse approximation for Compton scattering, which is implemented in Monte Carlo simulations commonly used by direct detection experiments, does not reproduce the measured spectrum below 0.5 keV. The data are in better agreement with ab initio calculations originally developed for x-ray absorption spectroscopy.The DAMIC-M project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme Grant Agreement No. 788137, and from NSF through Grant No. NSF PHY-1812654. The work at University of Chicago and University of Washington was supported through Grant No. NSF PHY-2110585. This work was supported by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through an endowment from the Kavli Foundation. We also thank the College of Arts and Sciences at UW for contributing the first CCDs to the DAMIC-M project. I. F. C. A. was supported by project PID2019–109829 GB-I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033. The Centro Atómico Bariloche group is supported by ANPCyT Grant No. PICT-2018-03069. The University of Zürich was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The CCD development work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Microsystems Lab was supported in part by the Director, Office of Science, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We thank Gerald T. Seidler for introducing us to the feff code, and thank Joshua J. Kas, Micah P. Prange, and John J. Rehr for their support with feff. We also thank Christian Sternemann for sharing his NRIXS silicon spectra

High-precision measurement of the W boson mass with the CDF II detector

The mass of the W boson, a mediator of the weak force between elementary particles, is tightly constrained by the symmetries of the standard model of particle physics. The Higgs boson was the last missing component of the model. After observation of the Higgs boson, a measurement of the W boson mass provides a stringent test of the model. We measure the W boson mass, MW, using data corresponding to 8.8 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected in proton-antiproton collisions at a 1.96 tera–electron volt center-of-mass energy with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. A sample of approximately 4 million W boson candidates is used to obtain MW=80,433.5±6.4stat±6.9syst=80,433.5±9.4 MeV/c2 , the precision of which exceeds that of all previous measurements combined (stat, statistical uncertainty; syst, systematic uncertainty; MeV, mega–electron volts; c, speed of light in a vacuum). This measurement is in significant tension with the standard model expectation.Funding:This work wassupported by the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology ofJapan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Councilof Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; theSwiss National Science Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation;the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and TechnologyFacilities Council and the Royal Society, UK; the Russian Foundationfor Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency;the Academy of Finland; and the Australian Research Council (ARC)

Direct measurement of the total decay width of the top quark

We present a measurement of the total decay width of the top quark using events with top-antitop quark pair candidates reconstructed in the final state with one charged lepton and four or more hadronic jets. We use the full Tevatron run II data set of ?s=1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collisions recorded by the CDF II detector. The top quark mass and the mass of the hadronically decaying W boson are reconstructed for each event and compared with distributions derived from simulated signal and background samples to extract the top quark width (?top) and the energy scale of the calorimeter jets with in situ calibration. For a top quark mass M top=172.5 GeV/c2, we find 1.10<?top<4.05 GeV at 68% confidence level, which is in agreement with the standard model expectation of 1.3 GeV and is the most precise direct measurement of the top quark width to date.We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the Korean World Class University Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Society, UK; the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency; the Academy of Finland; the Australian Research Council (ARC); and the EU community Marie Curie Fellowship Contract No. 302103

Combination of Tevatron searches for the standard model Higgs boson in the W+W- decay mode

We combine searches by the CDF and D0 Collaborations for a Higgs boson decaying to W+W?. The data correspond to an integrated total luminosity of 4.8 (CDF) and 5.4 (D0) fb?1 of p¯p collisions at ?s=1.96??TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. No excess is observed above background expectation, and resulting limits on Higgs boson production exclude a standard model Higgs boson in the mass range 162?166 GeV at the 95% C.L

Search for resonant top-antitop production in the lepton plus jets decay mode using the full CDF data set

This Letter reports a search for a narrow resonant state decaying into two W bosons and two b quarks where one W boson decays leptonically and the other decays into a quark-antiquark pair. The search is particularly sensitive to top-antitop resonant production. We use the full data sample of proton-antiproton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45  fb−1. No evidence for resonant production is found, and upper limits on the production cross section times branching ratio for a narrow resonant state are extracted. Within a specific benchmark model, we exclude a Z′ boson with mass, MZ′, below 915  GeV/c2 decaying into a top-antitop pair at the 95% credibility level assuming a Z′ boson decay width of ΓZ′=0.012MZ′. This is the most sensitive search for a narrow q¯q-initiated t¯t resonance in the mass region below 750  GeV/c2.We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the Korean World Class University Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Society, United Kingdom; the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency; the Academy of Finland; and the Australian Research Council (ARC)ARC

Search for the production of ZW and ZZ boson pairs decaying into charged leptons and jets in pp¯ collisions at √s=1.96 TeV

We present a measurement of the production cross section for ZW and ZZ boson pairs in final states with a pair of charged leptons, from the decay of a Z boson, and at least two jets, from the decay of a W or Z boson, using the full sample of proton-antiproton collisions recorded with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron, corresponding to 8.9  fb−1 of integrated luminosity. We increase the sensitivity to vector-boson decays into pairs of quarks using a neural-network discriminant that exploits the differences between the spatial spread of energy depositions and charged-particle momenta contained within the jet of particles originating from quarks and gluons. Additionally, we employ new jet energy corrections to Monte Carlo simulations that account for differences in the observed energy scales for quark and gluon jets. The number of signal events is extracted through a simultaneous fit to the dijet mass spectrum in three classes of events: events likely to contain jets with a heavy-quark decay, events likely to contain jets originating from light quarks, and events that fail these identification criteria. We determine the production cross section to be σZW+ZZ=2.5+2.0−1.0  pb (<6.1  pb at the 95% confidence level), consistent with the standard model prediction of 5.1 pb.We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the Korean World Class University Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Society, United Kingdom; the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency; the Academy of Finland; the Australian Research Council (ARCARC); and the EU community Marie Curie Fellowship Contract No. 302103

Measurement of the cross section for prompt isolated diphoton production using the full CDF run II data sample

This Letter reports a measurement of the cross section for producing pairs of central prompt isolated photons in proton-antiproton collisions at a total energy √s=1.96  TeV using data corresponding to 9.5  fb−1 integrated luminosity collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The measured differential cross section is compared to three calculations derived from the theory of strong interactions. These include a prediction based on a leading order matrix element calculation merged with a parton shower model, a next-to-leading order calculation, and a next-to-next-to-leading order calculation. The first and last calculations reproduce most aspects of the data, thus showing the importance of higher-order contributions for understanding the theory of strong interaction and improving measurements of the Higgs boson and searches for new phenomena in diphoton final states.We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the Korean World Class University Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Society, UK; the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency; the Academy of Finland; the Australian Research Council (ARC); and the EU community Marie Curie Fellowship Contract No. 302103

Measurement of the leptonic asymmetry in t¯t events produced in p¯p collisions at √s=1.96 TeV

We measure the asymmetry in the charge-weighted rapidity qyℓ of the lepton in semileptonic t¯t decays recorded with the CDF II detector using the full Tevatron Run II sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.4  fb−1. A parametrization of the asymmetry as a function of qyℓ is used to correct for the finite acceptance of the detector and recover the production-level asymmetry. The result of AℓFB=0.094+0.032−0.029 is to be compared to the standard model next-to-leading-order prediction of AℓFB=0.038±0.003.We acknowledge the kind assistance of A. Falkowski and T. Tait in the construction of the Octet models as well as W. Bernreuther and G. Perez for helpful discussion. We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany; the Korean World Class University Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Society, U.K.; the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Slovak R&D Agency; the Academy of Finland; the Australian Research Council (ARC); and the EU community Marie Curie Fellowship Contract No. 302103