Related papers: Migdal Effect in Dark Matter Direct Detection Expe…
Directional Dark Matter Detection (DDMD) can open a new signature for Weakly Massive Interacting Particles (WIMPs) Dark Matter. The directional signature provides in addition, an unique way to overcome the neutron and neutrino backgrounds.…
The non-detection of GeV-scale WIMPs has led to increased interest in more general candidates, including sub-GeV dark matter. Direct detection experiments, despite their high sensitivity to WIMPs, are largely blind to sub-GeV dark matter.…
The annihilation of dark matter (DM) particles accumulated in the Sun could produce a flux of neutrinos, which is potentially detectable with neutrino detectors/telescopes and the DM elastic scattering cross section can be constrained.…
The LUX experimental group has just announced the most stringent upper limits so far obtained on the cross section of WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering [1]. This result is a factor of two to five below the previous best upper limit [2] and…
Inelastic dark matter and strongly interacting dark matter are poorly constrained by direct detection experiments since they both require the scattering event to deliver energy from the nucleus into the dark matter in order to have…
Direct searches for low mass dark matter particles via scattering off target nuclei require detection of recoiling atoms with energies of ~1 keV or less. The amount of electronic excitation produced by such atoms is quenched relative to a…
We study the possibility of detecting dark matter directly via a small but energetic component that is allowed within present-day constraints. Drawing closely upon the fact that neutral current neutrino nucleon interactions are…
We revisit the detection of luminous dark matter in direct detection experiments. In this scenario, dark matter scatters endothermically to produce an excited state, which decays to produce a photon. We explore ways in which the electron…
The velocity distribution function of dark matter particles is expected to show significant departures from a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. This can have profound effects on the predicted dark matter - nucleon scattering rates in direct…
The direct search for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) is performed by detecting nuclear recoils (NR) produced in a target material from the WIMP elastic scattering. A promising experimental strategy…
Neutron stars harbour matter under extreme conditions, providing a unique testing ground for fundamental interactions. We recently developed an improved treatment of dark matter (DM) capture in neutron stars that properly incorporates many…
We show that dark matter direct detection experiments are sensitive to the existence of particles with a small effective charge (for instance, via couplings to a kinetically mixed, low-mass dark photon). Our forecasts do not depend on these…
The search for sub-GeV dark matter via scattering on electrons has ramped up in the last few years. Like in the case of dark matter scattering on nuclei, electron-recoil-based searches also face an ultimate background in the form of…
Searches for dark matter-induced recoils have made impressive advances in the last few years. Yet the field is confronted by several outstanding problems. First, the inevitable background of solar neutrinos will soon inhibit the conclusive…
Strongly-interacting dark matter can be accumulated in large quantities inside the Earth, and for dark matter particles in a few GeV mass range, it can exist in large quantities near the Earth's surface. We investigate the constraints…
Several directional techniques have been proposed for a directional detection of Dark matter, among others anisotropic crystal detectors, nuclear emulsion plates, and low-pressure gaseous TPCs. The key point is to get access to the initial…
Dark matter is poorly constrained by direct detection experiments at masses below 1 MeV. This is an important target for the next generation of experiments, and several methods have been proposed to probe this mass range. One class of such…
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…
Direct detection experiments are gaining in mass reach. Here we show that the inclusion of dark Compton scattering, which has typically been neglected in absorption searches, has a substantial impact on the reach and discovery potential of…
The XENON collaboration recently reported an excess of electron recoil events in the low energy region with a significance of around $3.3\sigma$. An explanation of this excess in terms of thermal dark matter seems challenging. We propose a…