Good NEWS for GeV Dark Matter Searches

Abstract

The proposed NEWS apparatus, a spherical detector with a small central electrode sensor operating as a proportional counter, promises to explore new swaths of the direct detection parameter space in the GeV and sub-GeV Dark Matter particle mass range by employing very light nuclear targets, such as H and He, and by taking advantage of a very low (sub-keV) energy threshold. Here we discuss and study two example classes of Dark Matter models that will be tested with NEWS: GeV-scale millicharged Dark Matter, and a GeV-Dirac Fermion Dark Matter model with a light (MeV-GeV) scalar or vector mediator, and indicate the physical regions of parameter space the experiment can probe.