Paleo-detectors: Searching for Dark Matter with Ancient Minerals

Recently, we proposed paleo-detectors as a method for the direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter. In paleo-detectors, one would search for the persistent traces left by dark matter-nucleon interactions in ancient minerals. Thanks to the large integration time of paleo-detectors, relatively small target masses suffice to obtain exposures, i.e. the product of integration time and target mass, much larger than what is feasible in the conventional direct detection approach. Here, we discuss the paleo-detector proposal in detail, in particular, a range of background sources. For low-mass WIMPs with masses $m_\chi\lesssim10\,$GeV, the largest contribution to the background budget comes from nuclear recoils induced by coherent scattering of solar neutrinos. For heavier WIMPs, the largest background source is nuclear recoils induced by fast neutrons created by heavy radioactive contaminants, particularly $^{238}$U; neutrons can arise in spontaneous fission or from $\alpha$-particles created in $^{238}$U decays. We also discuss the challenges of mineral optimization, specifically the determination of readily available minerals from rocks in deep boreholes which are able to record persistent damage from nuclear recoils. In order to suppress backgrounds induced by radioactive contaminants, we propose to use minerals found in marine evaporites or in ultra-basic rocks. We estimate the sensitivity of paleo-detectors to spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleus interactions. In all interaction cases considered here, the sensitivity to low-mass WIMPs with masses $m_\chi\lesssim10\,$GeV extends to WIMP-nucleon cross sections many orders of magnitude smaller than current upper limits. For heavier WIMPs with masses $m_\chi\gtrsim30\,$GeV cross sections a factor of a few to $\sim100$ smaller than current upper limits can be probed by paleo-detectors. [Abridged]