2 research outputs found
Elastic Scattering and Direct Detection of Kaluza-Klein Dark Matter
Recently a new dark matter candidate has been proposed as a consequence of
universal compact extra dimensions. It was found that to account for
cosmological observations, the masses of the first Kaluza-Klein modes (and thus
the approximate size of the extra dimension) should be in the range 600-1200
GeV when the lightest Kaluza-Klein particle (LKP) corresponds to the
hypercharge boson and in the range 1 - 1.8 TeV when it corresponds to a
neutrino. In this article, we compute the elastic scattering cross sections
between Kaluza-Klein dark matter and nuclei both when the lightest Kaluza-Klein
particle is a KK mode of a weak gauge boson, and when it is a neutrino. We
include nuclear form factor effects which are important to take into account
due to the large LKP masses favored by estimates of the relic density. We
present both differential and integrated rates for present and proposed
Germanium, NaI and Xenon detectors. Observable rates at current detectors are
typically less than one event per year, but the next generation of detectors
can probe a significant fraction of the relevant parameter space.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures; v2,v3: Ref. added, discussion improved,
conclusions unchanged. v4: Introduction was expanded to be more appropriate
for non experts. Various clarifications added in the text. Version to be
published in New Journal of Physic