6 research outputs found
Determining Ratios of WIMP-Nucleon Cross Sections from Direct Dark Matter Detection Data
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading
candidates for Dark Matter. So far the usual procedure for constraining the
WIMP-nucleon cross sections in direct Dark Matter detection experiments have
been to fit the predicted event rate based on some model(s) of the Galactic
halo and of WIMPs to experimental data. One has to assume whether the
spin-independent (SI) or the spin-dependent (SD) WIMP-nucleus interaction
dominates, and results of such data analyses are also expressed as functions of
the as yet unknown WIMP mass. In this article, I introduce methods for
extracting information on the WIMP-nucleon cross sections by considering a
general combination of the SI and SD interactions. Neither prior knowledge
about the local density and the velocity distribution of halo WIMPs nor about
their mass is needed. Assuming that an exponential-like shape of the recoil
spectrum is confirmed from experimental data, the required information are only
the measured recoil energies (in low energy ranges) and the number of events in
the first energy bin from two or more experiments.Comment: 33 pages, 20 eps figures; v2: typos fixed, references added and
updated, revised version for publicatio
Neutrino Probes of the Nature of Light Dark Matter
Dark matter particles gravitationally trapped inside the Sun may annihilate
into Standard Model particles, producing a flux of neutrinos. The prospects of
detecting these neutrinos in future multi-\kton{} neutrino detectors designed
for other physics searches are explored here. We study the capabilities of a
34/100 \kton{} liquid argon detector and a 100 \kton{} magnetized iron
calorimeter detector. These detectors are expected to determine the energy and
the direction of the incoming neutrino with unprecedented precision allowing
for tests of the dark matter nature at very low dark matter masses, in the
range of 5-50 GeV. By suppressing the atmospheric background with angular cuts,
these techniques would be sensitive to dark matter - nucleon spin dependent
cross sections at the fb level, reaching down to a few ab for the most
favorable annihilation channels and detector technology.Comment: Minor changes and clarifications, matches JCAP versio
First Dark Matter Results from the XENON100 Experiment
The XENON100 experiment, in operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran
Sasso in Italy, is designed to search for dark matter WIMPs scattering off 62
kg of liquid xenon in an ultra-low background dual-phase time projection
chamber. In this letter, we present first dark matter results from the analysis
of 11.17 live days of non-blind data, acquired in October and November 2009. In
the selected fiducial target of 40 kg, and within the pre-defined signal
region, we observe no events and hence exclude spin-independent WIMP-nucleon
elastic scattering cross-sections above 3.4 x 10^-44 cm^2 for 55 GeV/c^2 WIMPs
at 90% confidence level. Below 20 GeV/c^2, this result constrains the
interpretation of the CoGeNT and DAMA signals as being due to spin-independent,
elastic, light mass WIMP interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Matches published versio
Analysis of the XENON100 dark matter search data
The XENON100 experiment, situated in the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, aims at the direct detection of dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), based on their interactions with xenon nuclei in an ultra low background dual-phase time projection chamber. This paper describes the general methods developed for the analysis of the XENON100 data. These methods have been used in the 100.9 and 224.6 live days science runs from which results on spin-independent elastic, spin-dependent elastic and inelastic WIMP-nucleon cross-sections have already been reported