Abstract
We perform the first consistent calculation of elastic-scattering and inelastic-scattering structure functions for spin-dependent WIMP-nucleus scattering off 183W in a microscopic nuclear-theory framework. The nuclear structure calculations are performed in the microscopic interacting boson-fermion model (IBFM-2). Our results show that while 183W is very insensitive to spin-dependent elastic scattering, the structure function for inelastic scattering is quite sizable at small momentum transfers. Moreover, to our knowledge 183W provides the first studied case where inelastic scattering can compete with elastic scattering as the primary detection signal.
Highlights
The hunt for dark matter intensifies, as detectors get progressively larger and more efficient at catching the most elusive of nature’s particles
The calculated spin structure functions for elastic and inelastic scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) off 183W are shown in Fig. 2 as functions of the nuclear recoil energy ER = q2/(2mA ), where mA is the mass of the nucleus
We have reported the first calculation of spin-dependent structure functions for WIMP-nucleus scattering for the deformed 183W nucleus
Summary
The hunt for dark matter intensifies, as detectors get progressively larger and more efficient at catching the most elusive of nature’s particles. Reliable estimates for structure functions require a realistic model for the nucleus, and such calculations have typically been performed in the nuclear shell model [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. The formalism was benchmarked recently with wellestablished detector nuclei, and it was shown to have reasonable accuracy when compared with earlier calculations in the nuclear shell model [16]. We utilize this formalism to perform the first calculation of spin-dependent structure functions for WIMPs scattering off 183W.
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