Reducing the Solar Neutrino Background Using Polarised Helium-3

Abstract

Future dark matter detectors plan to have sensitivities such that solar neutrinos will start to become a problematic background. In this work we show that a polarised helium-3 detector would in principle be able to eliminate 98% of these events when the orientation of the polarisation axis is antiparallel to the direction of the Sun. We comment on the possible improvement in sensitivity of dark matter direct detection experiments due to this effect and the feasibility of building such a detector.