Spin-Dependent WIMPs in DAMA?
Abstract
We investigate whether the annual modulation observed in the DAMA experiment can be due to a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) with an axial-vector (spin-dependent; SD) coupling to nuclei. We evaluate the SD WIMP-proton cross section under the assumption that such scattering accounts for the DAMA modulation, and we do the same for a SD WIMP-neutron cross section. We show that SD WIMP-proton scattering is ruled out in a model-independent fashion by null searches for energetic neutrinos from WIMP annihilation in the Sun, and that SD WIMP-neutron scattering is ruled out for WIMP masses > 20 GeV by the null result with the DAMA Xe detector. A SD WIMP with mass < 20 GeV is still compatible, but only if the SD WIMP-neutron interaction is four orders of magnitude greater than the WIMP-proton interaction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0010036,
title = {Spin-Dependent WIMPs in DAMA?},
author = {Piero Ullio and Marc Kamionkowski and Petr Vogel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0010036},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 2 figures