Related papers: Direct detection of WIMPs
Direct detection of dark matter with directional sensitivity is a promising concept for improving the search for weakly interacting massive particles. With information on the direction of WIMP induced nuclear recoils one has access to the…
Cosmological observations indicate that most of the matter in the Universe is Dark Matter. Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) can be detected directly, via its elastic scattering off target nuclei. Most…
The complementarity of direct, indirect and collider searches for dark matter has improved our understanding concerning the properties of the dark matter particle. I will review the basic concepts that these methods rely upon and highlight…
Direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) candidates of Dark Matter (DM) is studied within the context of a self-consistent truncated isothermal model of the finite-size dark halo of the Galaxy based on the "King model"…
Direct dark matter searches are promising techniques to identify the nature of dark matter particles. I describe the future of this field of research, focussing on the question of what can be achieved in the next decade. I will present the…
Dark matter accounts for 26% of the mass-energy density of the Universe, however, its nature and origins remain the most important open questions in physics. The search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), one of the leading…
We review several current aspects of dark matter theory and experiment. We overview the present experimental status, which includes current bounds and recent claims and hints of a possible signal in a wide range of experiments: direct…
Cosmological observations and the dynamics of the Milky Way provide ample evidence for an invisible and dominant mass component. This so-called dark matter could be made of new, colour and charge neutral particles, which were…
We investigate a new class of dark matter: superweakly-interacting massive particles (superWIMPs). As with conventional WIMPs, superWIMPs appear in well-motivated particle theories with naturally the correct relic density. In contrast to…
WIMP direct detection experiments probe the ultra-local dark matter density and velocity distribution. We review how uncertainties in these quantities affect the accuracy with which the WIMP mass and cross-section can be constrained or…
Once weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are unambiguously detected in direct-detection experiments, the challenge will be to determine what one may infer from the data. Here, I examine the prospects for reconstructing the local…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. We develop a model-independent method for determining the mass $m_\chi$ of the WIMP by using data (i.e., measured recoil energies) of direct…
We present a new module of the micrOMEGAs package for the calculation of WIMP-nuclei elastic scattering cross sections relevant for the direct detection of dark matter through its interaction with nuclei in a large detector. With this new…
The direct detection of dark matter constituents, in particular the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), is central to particle physics and cosmology. In this paper we study WIMP induced transitions from isomeric nuclear states for…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. So far the usual procedure for constraining the WIMP-nucleon cross sections in direct Dark Matter detection experiments have been to fit the…
In this article I review model-independent procedures for extracting properties of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) from direct Dark Matter detection experiments. Neither prior knowledge about the velocity distribution function…
Indirect detection of dark matter particles, i.e. the detection of annihilation or decay products of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, has entered a pivotal phase as experiments reach sensitivities that probe the most interesting…
A weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) is perhaps the most promising candidate for the dark matter in the Galactic halo. The WIMP detection rate in laboratory searches is fixed by the cross section for elastic WIMP-nucleus scattering.…
The WIMP proposed here yields the observed abundance of dark matter, and is consistent with the current limits from direct detection, indirect detection, and collider experiments, if its mass is $\sim 72$ GeV/$c^2$. It is also consistent…
The energy spectrum of nuclear recoils in Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) direct detection experiments depends on the underlying WIMP mass (strongly for light WIMPs, weakly for heavy WIMPs). We discuss how the accuracy with which…