Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Calibrations and backgrounds for dark matter direct detection
Daniel Baxter, Raymond Bunker, Sally Shaw, Shawn Westerdale, Isaac Arnquist, Daniel S. Akerib, Rob Calkins, Susana Cebrián, James B. Dent, Maria Laura di Vacri, Jim Dobson, Daniel Egana-Ugrinovic, Andrew Erlandson, Chamkaur Ghag, Carter Hall, Jeter Hall, Scott Haselschwardt, Eric Hoppe, Chris M. Jackson, Yonatan Kahn, Alvine Kamaha, Mike Kelsey, Alexander Kish, Noah Kurinsky, Matthias Laubenstein, Eric H. Miller, Eric Morrison, Brianna Mount, Jayden L. Newstead, Stefano Nisi, Ibles Olcina, John Orrell, Emily Perry, Andreas Piepke, Sagar Sharma Poudel, Karthik Ramanathan, Juergen Reichenbacher, Tarek Saab, Richard Saldanha, Claudio Savarese, Richard Schnee, Silvia Scorza, Rajeev Singh, Kelly Stifter, Burkhant Suerfu, Matthew Szydagis, Dylan J. Temples, Anthony Villano, David Woodward, Jingke Xu
Future dark matter direct detection experiments will reach unprecedented levels of sensitivity. Achieving this sensitivity will require more precise models of signal and background rates in future detectors. Improving the precision of signal and background modeling goes hand-in-hand with novel calibration techniques that can probe rare processes and lower threshold detector response. The goal of this white paper is to outline community needs to meet the background and calibration requirements of next-generation dark matter direct detection experiments.