Non-standard interactions of solar neutrinos in dark matter experiments

Abstract

Non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) affect both their propagation through matter and their detection, with bounds on NSI parameters coming from various astrophysical and terrestrial neutrino experiments. In this paper, we show that NSI can be probed in future direct dark matter detection experiments through both elastic neutrino-electron scattering and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering, and that these channels provide complementary probes of NSI. We show NSI can increase the event rate due to solar neutrinos, with a sharp increase for lower nuclear recoil energy thresholds that are within reach for upcoming detectors. We also identify an interference range of NSI parameters for which the rate is reduced by approximately 40\%. Finally, we show that the "dark side" solution for the solar neutrino mixing angle may be discovered at forthcoming direct detection experiments.