English

Dark matter scattering off ${}^2$H and ${}^4$He nuclei within chiral effective field theory

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-09-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We study dark matter, assumed to be composed by weak interacting massive particles (WIMPs), scattering off 2{}^2H and 4{}^4He nuclei. In order to parameterize the WIMP-nucleon interaction the chiral effective field theory approach is used. Considering only interactions invariant under parity, charge conjugation and time reversal, we examine five interaction types: scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial and tensor. Scattering amplitudes between two nucleons and a WIMP are determined up to second order of chiral perturbation theory. We apply this program to calculate the interaction rate as function of the WIMP mass and of the magnitude of the WIMP-quark coupling constants. From our study, we conclude that the scalar nuclear response functions result much greater than the others due to theirs large combination of low energy constants. We verify that the leading order contributions are dominant in this low energy processes. We also provide an estimate for the background due to atmospheric neutrinos.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.06599,
  title  = {Dark matter scattering off ${}^2$H and ${}^4$He nuclei within chiral effective field theory},
  author = {E. Filandri and M. Viviani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.06599},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

v2) List of main changes: -Revised title - Section III has been completely re-organized, moving old subsections IIIA-F to Appendix A. - The sentence before Eq.(4) has been modified; also Eq.(4) has been modified. - Throghout the paper, the notation C^X_{+-} has been adopted - Appendix A has been added - Old Appendix A has been now renamed Appendix B