The impact of going beyond the Maxwell distribution in direct dark matter detection rates
Abstract
We consider direct dark matter detection rates and investigate the difference between a standard Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution and a "realistic" distribution like the ones extracted from numerical N-body simulations. Sizable differences are observed when such results are compared to the standard Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. For a light target both the total rate and the annual modulation are reduced by ~25%. For a heavy target the total rate is virtually unchanged, whereas the annual modulation is modified by up to 50%, depending on the WIMP mass and detector energy threshold. We also consider the effect of a possible velocity anisotropy, and the effect is found to be largest for a light target For the realistic velocity distribution the anisotropy may reduce the annual modulation, in contrast to the Maxwell-Boltzmann case.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0711.4895,
title = {The impact of going beyond the Maxwell distribution in direct dark matter detection rates},
author = {J. D. Vergados and S. H. Hansen and O. Host},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.4895},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
13 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. D