Related papers: Prospects for Distinguishing Dark Matter Models Us…
Direct detection experiments for light dark matter are making enormous leaps in reaching previously unexplored model space. Several recent proposals rely on collective excitations, where the experimental sensitivity is highly dependent on…
Previous work has argued that the DAMA annual modulation signal might be due to electron recoils in plasma dark matter models. A specific model assuming mirror dark matter and featuring collisional shielding of a detector due to Earth-bound…
If dark matter is composed of new fundamental particles, Earth's orbital motion around the Sun may induce an annual modulation in the rate at which these particles interact in a terrestrial detector. The DAMA collaboration has identified at…
The elastic nuclear recoil signal, being under intense scrutiny by multiple underground experiments, can be interpreted either as coming from the interaction of nuclei with WIMP dark matter or from the scattering of new species of…
We study the case of multi-component dark matter, in particular how direct detection signals are modified in the presence of several stable weakly-interacting-massive particles. Assuming a positive signal in a future direct detection…
We examine the sensitivity of a large scale two-phase liquid argon detector to the directionality of the dark matter signal. This study was performed under the assumption that, above 50 keV of recoil energy, one can determine (with some…
We study the impact of the assumed velocity distribution of galactic dark matter particles on the interpretation of results from nuclear recoil detectors. By converting experimental data to variables that make the astrophysical unknowns…
The time-dependent modulation of the event rate in dark matter direct detection experiments, arising from the motion of the Earth with respect to the Galactic rest frame, is a distinctive signature whose observation is crucial for claiming…
Recently, the CoGeNT collaboration presented a positive signal for an annual modulation in their data set. In light of the long standing annual modulation signal in DAMA/LIBRA, we analyze the compatibility of both of these signal within the…
A neutral dark matter (DM) particle with a magnetic dipole moment has a very different direct detection phenomenology with respect to standard candidates. This is due to the peculiar functional form of the differential cross section for…
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…
Directional detection is a promising Dark Matter search strategy. Even though it could accommodate to a sizeable background contamination, electron/recoil discrimination remains a key and challenging issue as for direction-insensitive…
We present some theoretical results relevant to the direct dark matter detection experiments, paying particular attention to directional experiments, i.e. experiments in which, not only the energy but the direction of the recoiling nucleus…
I derive new halo-independent lower bounds on the product of the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section and the local dark matter density that are valid for annual modulations of dark matter direct detection signals. They are obtained…
Since the expected rates for neutralino-nucleus scattering are expected to be small, one should exploit all the characteristic signatures of this reaction. Such are: (i) In the standard recoil measurements the modulation of the event rate…
Some of direct dark matter searches reported not only positive signals but also annual modulation of the signal event. However, the parameter spaces have been excluded by other experiments. Isospin violating dark matter solves the…
We compare the sensitivity of WIMP detection via direct separation of possible signal vs. background to WIMP detection via detection of an annual modulation, in which signal and background cannot be separated on an event-by-event basis. In…
For many years annually modulating $\sim$ keV scintillations have been observed in the DAMA/NaI and DAMA/Libra experiments. A dark matter - electron scattering interpretation is now favoured given the stringent constraints on nuclear recoil…
DAMA observes an annual modulation in their event rate, as might be expected from dark matter scatterings, while CoGeNT has reported evidence for a similar modulation. The simplest interpretation of these findings in terms of dark…
The differential event rate for direct detection of dark matter, both the time averaged and the modulated one due to the motion of the Earth, are discussed. The calculations focus on relatively light cold dark matter candidates (WIMP) and…