What can(not) be measured with ton-scale dark matter direct detection experiments

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Direct searches for dark matter have prompted in recent years a great deal of excitement within the astroparticle physics community, but the compatibility between signal claims and null results of different experiments is far from being a settled issue. In this context, we study here the prospects for constraining the dark matter parameter space with the next generation of ton-scale detectors. Using realistic experimental capabilities for a wide range of targets (including fluorine, sodium, argon, germanium, iodine and xenon), the role of target complementarity is analysed in detail while including the impact of astrophysical uncertainties in a self-consistent manner. We show explicitly that a multi-target signal in future direct detection facilities can determine the sign of the ratio of scalar couplings fn/fp, but not its scale. This implies that the scalar-proton cross-section is left essentially unconstrained if the assumption fp ∼ fn is relaxed. Instead, we find that both the axial-proton cross-section and the ratio of axial couplings an/ap can be measured with fair accuracy if multi-ton instruments using sodium and iodine will eventually come online. Moreover, it turns out that future direct detection data can easily discriminate between elastic and inelastic scatterings. Finally, we argue that, with weak assumptions regarding the WIMP couplings and the astrophysics, only the dark matter mass and the inelastic parameter (i.e. mass splitting) may be inferred from the recoil spectra — specifically, we anticipate an accuracy of tens of GeV (tens of keV) in the measurement of the dark matter mass (inelastic parameter).