Abstract
If dark matter is composed of weakly interacting particles, Earth’s orbital motion induces a small annual variation in the rate at which these particles interact in a terrestrial detector. The DAMA collaboration has identified at a 9.3σ confidence level (CL) such an annual modulation in their event rate over two detector iterations, DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA, each with about 7 years of observations. We examine the nature of this modulation signal and find the modulation amplitude for the two detectors is inconsistent at the 3σ CL over 2–6 keVee. Such a time-dependence in the modulation amplitude is unexpected behavior for a dark matter signal, at least for dark matter halo morphologies consistent with the DAMA signal. We also find unusual behavior over the 5–6 keVee energy range that might indicate problems with the data.
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