Abstract
We examine the dark matter interpretation of the modulation signal reported by the DAMA experiment from the perspective of effective field theories displaying Galilean invariance. We consider the most general effective coupling leading to the elastic scattering of a dark matter particle with spin 0 or 1/2 off a nucleon, and we analyze the compatibility of the DAMA signal with the null results from other direct detection experiments, as well as with the non-observation of a high energy neutrino flux in the direction of the Sun from dark matter annihilation. To this end, we develop a novel semi-analytical approach for comparing experimental results in the high-dimensional parameter space of the non-relativistic effective theory. Assuming the standard halo model, we find a strong tension between the dark matter interpretation of the DAMA modulation signal and the null result experiments. We also list possible ways-out of this conclusion.
Highlights
This paper is organized as follows: in section 2 we review the non-relativistic effective theory approach to dark matter-nucleon interactions, in section 3 we present our method to confront the null results of a given set of experiments with the modulation signal reported by DAMA and in section 4 we present the numerical results
For a given dark matter mass mχ, the incompatibility between the DAMA modulation signal in the bin [E−, E+] and the null search results can be formulated by requiring an empty intersection between the region outside the ellipsoid represented by the 28 × 28 matrix oDnσA-Ml.l.A[E−,E+](mχ), which defines the region allowed by the DAMA experiment in the energy bin [E−, E+], and the regions enclosed by the ellipsoids represented by the matrices ojnσ-u.l.(mχ), which define the region allowed by the experimental upper limit j, with j in a given set
We have investigated the compatibility of the modulation signal reported by the DAMA experiment with the null results from LUX, SuperCDMS, SIMPLE, PICO, COUPP, PICASSO and Super-Kamiokande, under the assumption that the dark matter scatters elastically off nuclei and that the velocity distribution in the Solar System follows a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
Summary
We review the non-relativistic effective theory of one-body dark matter-nucleon interactions. From the Hamiltonian density in eq (2.2), one can calculate the differential cross-section for non-relativistic dark matter scattering from target nuclei of mass mT and spin J. It is given by dσT (v2, ER) dER mT 2πv. The dark matter response functions Rkττ are analytically known, and depend on q2 and vT⊥2 = v2 − q2/(4μ2T ), where μT is the dark matter-nucleus reduced mass They are quadratic in matrix elements of the operators in eqs. (2.12), (2.13), (2.14) can be used to calculate the event rates in direct detection experiments and neutrino telescopes for a given underlying particle physics model of dark matter. As we will show this factorization allows to efficiently compare the results of various direct detection experiments and neutrino telescopes in the high-dimensional parameter space of the non-relativistic effective theory, without making any a priori assumptions regarding the relative size of the various Wilson coefficients cτk
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