English

DAMA/LIBRA-phase2 in WIMP effective models

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2018-07-10 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

The DAMA/LIBRA collaboration has recently released updated results from their search for the annual modulation signal expected from Dark Matter (DM) scattering in their NaI detectors. We have fitted the updated DAMA result for the modulation amplitudes in terms of a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) signal, parameterizing the interaction with nuclei in terms of the most general effective Lagrangian for a WIMP particle spin up to 1/2, systematically assuming dominance of one of the 14 possible interaction terms, and assuming for the WIMP velocity distribution a standard Maxwellian. We find that most of the couplings of the non-relativistic effective Hamiltonian can provide a better fit compared to the standard Spin Independent interaction case, and with a reduced fine-tuning of the three parameters (WIMP mass, WIMP-nucleon effective cross-section and ratio between the WIMP-neutron and the WIMP-proton couplings). Moreover, effective models for which the cross section depends explicitly on the WIMP incoming velocity can provide a better fit of the DAMA data at large values of mχm_{\chi} compared to the standard velocity-independent cross-section due to a different phase of the modulation amplitudes. All the best fit solutions are in tension with exclusion plots of both XENON1T and PICO60.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.07528,
  title  = {DAMA/LIBRA-phase2 in WIMP effective models},
  author = {Sunghyun Kang and Stefano Scopel and Gaurav Tomar and Jong-Hyun Yoon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.07528},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

17 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. One high-energy control bin added to the fit, results of Table 1 updated accordingly, no change in the conclusions with the exception of model c5. Some references added and more details provided in the discussion. Updated to published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:29:41.380Z