Related papers: Astrophysical uncertainties on direct detection ex…
We examine the effect of some uncertainties in the input astrophysical parameters on direct detection searches for WIMPs in the Galactic halo. We concentrate on the possible WIMP annual modulation signal recently reported by the DAMA…
We propose an improved method to study recent and near-future dark matter direct detection experiments with small numbers of observed events. Our method determines in a quantitative and halo-independent way whether the experiments point…
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…
We address the question of whether the upcoming generation of dark matter search experiments and colliders will be able to discover if the dark matter in the Universe has two components of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). We…
Although a discovery of wimps either at colliders or in direct experiments would have enormous implications for our understanding of particle physics, it would imply less than one would like about our understanding of the dark matter in the…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. We developed a model-independent method for determining the WIMP mass by using data (i.e., measured recoil energies) of direct detection…
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Thus the direct dark matter search, consisting of detecting the recoiling nucleus, is central…
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…
One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the main candidates for the relic dark matter (DM). The idea of the direct DM detection relies on elastic spin-dependent (SD) and spin-independent (SI) interaction of WIMPs with target…
In direct dark matter detection experiments, conventional elastic scattering of WIMPs results in exponentially falling recoil spectra. In contrast, theories of WIMPs with excited states can lead to nuclear recoil spectra that peak at finite…
Numerous lines of evidence indicate that the matter content of the Universe is dominated by some unseen component. Determining the nature of this Dark Matter is one of the most important problems in cosmology. Weakly Interacting Massive…
Directional detection of galactic Dark Matter is a promising search strategy for discriminating genuine WIMP events from background ones. However, to take full advantage of this powerful detection method, one need to be able to extract…
The existence of dark matter was suggested, using simple gravitational arguments, seventy years ago. Although we are now convinced that most of the mass in the Universe is indeed some non-luminous matter, we still do not know its…
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…
The sensitivity of direct detection experiments depends on the phase-space distribution of dark matter near the Sun, which can be modeled theoretically using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies. However,…
Among the different strategies aiming to detect WIMP dark matter (DM), a neutrino signal coming from the Sun would be a smoking gun. This possibility relies on the DM capture by the Sun driven by the local DM distribution assumptions: the…
Predicting the local flux of dark matter particles is vital for dark matter direct detection experiments. To date, such predictions have been based on simulations that model the dark matter alone. Here we include the influence of the…
The interpretation of dark matter direct detection experiments is complicated by the fact that neither the astrophysical distribution of dark matter nor the properties of its particle physics interactions with nuclei are known in detail. To…
Next-generation dark matter direct detection experiments will explore several orders of magnitude in the dark matter--nucleus scattering cross section below current upper limits. In case a signal is discovered the immediate task will be to…