Related papers: Resolving astrophysical uncertainties in dark matt…
The CoGeNT collaboration has reported evidence of an annual modulation in its first fifteen months of data. Here we compare the amplitude and phase of this signal to the modulation observed by the DAMA collaboration, assuming that both…
The detection of the theoretically expected dark matter is central to particle physics cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a natural dark matter candidate which is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Such…
Results from direct detection experiments are typically interpreted by employing an assumption about the dark matter velocity distribution, with results presented in the $m_\chi-\sigma_n$ plane. Recently methods which are independent of the…
We consider dark matter velocity distributions with an anisotropic component, and analyze how the velocity structure can be probed in a solid state ionization detector with no directional detection capability using a daily modulation effect…
It has recently been demonstrated that, in the event of a putative signal in dark matter direct detection experiments, properly identifying the underlying dark matter-nuclei interaction promises to be a challenging task. Given the most…
Even if dark matter particles are unambiguously discovered in experiments, there is no clear reason to expect that the dark matter problem has been solved. It is very easy to provide examples of dark matter scenarios (e.g. in supersymmetric…
Mirror atoms are expected to be a significant component of the galactic dark matter halo if mirror matter is identified with the non-baryonic dark matter in the Universe. Mirror matter can interact with ordinary matter via gravity and via…
Details about the velocity distribution of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter in our galaxy may be revealed by nuclear-recoil detectors with directional sensitivity. Previous studies have assumed that the velocity…
We briefly review some theoretical issues involved in the direct detection of supersymmetric (SUSY) dark matter. After a brief discussion of the allowed SYSY parameter space we focus on the determination of the traditional neutralino…
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…
The velocity distribution of dark matter near the Earth is important for an accurate analysis of the signals in terrestrial detectors. This distribution is typically extracted from numerical simulations. Here we address the possibility of…
We extract at redshift z=0 a Milky Way sized object including gas, stars and dark matter (DM) from a recent, high-resolution cosmological N-body simulation with baryons. Its resolution is sufficient to witness the formation of a rotating…
We study the distribution of dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies by modelling the moments of their line-of-sight velocity distributions. We discuss different dark matter density profiles, both cuspy and possessing flat density cores.…
Many observations suggest that much of the matter of the universe is non-baryonic. Recently, the DAMA NaI dark matter direct detection experiment reported an annual modulation in their event rate consistent with a WIMP relic. However, the…
Self-interacting dark matter offers an interesting alternative to collisionless dark matter because of its ability to preserve the large-scale success of the cold dark matter model, while seemingly solving its challenges on small scales. We…
Fitting the model "A" to dark matter direct detection data, when the model that underlies the data is "B", introduces a theoretical bias in the fit. We perform a quantitative study of the theoretical bias in dark matter direct detection,…
We investigate the reconstruction capabilities of Dark Matter mass and spin-independent cross-section from future ton-scale direct detection experiments using germanium, xenon or argon as targets. Adopting realistic values for the exposure,…
The measurement of an annual modulation in the event rate of direct dark matter detection experiments is a powerful tool for dark matter discovery. Indeed, several experiments have already claimed such a discovery in the past decade. While…
I present the status of direct dark matter detection with specific attention to the experimental results and their phenomenological interpretation in terms of dark matter interactions. In particular I review a new and more general approach…
Dark matter in the form of particles from a hidden mirror sector has recently been proposed as an explanation for the DAMA annual modulation signal. Here one assumes that there exists a small mixing between photons and mirror photons. We…