Neutrino and Dark Matter Detection

AbstraktAbstract

Our Universe is composed of about 68 % of dark energy, 27 % of dark matter, and less than 5 % of baryonic matter including < 1 % of neutrinos. Neutrinos and dark matter share many similar features. The same way neutrinos are considered as elementary particles, the nature of dark matter is widely believed to be based on the existence of new type of elementary particles as well. They both interact very weakly with visible matter, and therefore their direct detection is extremely difficult requiring ultra-low background conditions and advanced statistical methods for data analysis. Many theories explaining tiny neutrino masses predict the existence of heavy sterile neutrinos which are serious candidates of dark matter particles. Generally, this is accompanied by lepton number violation which is a necessary ingredient of explanation of matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. That relates neutrinos and dark matter to the cosmological concept of the leptogenesis. In the context of detection of neutrinos and dark matter, decay or annihilation of dark matter particles could present a key role producing neutrino fluxes detectable for large volume neutrino telescopes. The short overview of the recent status of the neutrino and dark matter physics, with emphasis to the experiments where IEAP researchers take an active role in the detector construction, data processing or MC simulations, will be introduced. Namely, experiments Baikal-GVD (neutrino telescope – high energy cosmic neutrinos detection), SuperNEMO (search for neutrinoless double beta decay), S3 (reactor antineutrinos detection & search for sterile neutrinos), DUNE (neutrino oscillations) and PICO (direct dark matter search) are going to be presented.

Our Universe is composed of about 68 % of dark energy, 27 % of dark matter, and less than 5 % of baryonic matter including < 1 % of neutrinos. Neutrinos and dark matter share many similar features. The same way neutrinos are considered as elementary particles, the nature of dark matter is widely believed to be based on the existence of new type of elementary particles as well. They both interact very weakly with visible matter, and therefore their direct detection is extremely difficult requiring ultra-low background conditions and advanced statistical methods for data analysis. Many theories explaining tiny neutrino masses predict the existence of heavy sterile neutrinos which are serious candidates of dark matter particles. Generally, this is accompanied by lepton number violation which is a necessary ingredient of explanation of matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. That relates neutrinos and dark matter to the cosmological concept of the leptogenesis. In the context of detection of neutrinos and dark matter, decay or annihilation of dark matter particles could present a key role producing neutrino fluxes detectable for large volume neutrino telescopes. The short overview of the recent status of the neutrino and dark matter physics, with emphasis to the experiments where IEAP researchers take an active role in the detector construction, data processing or MC simulations, will be introduced. Namely, experiments Baikal-GVD (neutrino telescope – high energy cosmic neutrinos detection), SuperNEMO (search for neutrinoless double beta decay), S3 (reactor antineutrinos detection & search for sterile neutrinos), DUNE (neutrino oscillations) and PICO (direct dark matter search) are going to be presented.