Hadronic uncertainties in the elastic scattering of supersymmetric dark matter

By John Ellis, K. Olive, C. Savage. 2008

328 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review the uncertainties in the spin-independent and spin-dependent elastic scattering cross sections of supersymmetric dark matter particles on protons and neutrons. We propagate the uncertainties in quark masses and hadronic matrix elements that are related to the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-nucleon $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ term and the spin content of the nucleon. By far the largest single uncertainty is that in spin-independent scattering induced by our ignorance of the $⟨N|\overline{q}q|N⟩$ matrix elements linked to the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-nucleon $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ term, which affects the ratio of cross sections on proton and neutron targets as well as their absolute values. This uncertainty is already impacting the interpretations of experimental searches for cold dark matter. We plead for an experimental campaign to determine better the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-nucleon $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ term. Uncertainties in the spin content of the proton affect significantly, but less strongly, the calculation of rates used in indirect searches.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/769114aee48e466538d2b40f4fb8ca9a6e680def

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Citations in the corpus

micrOMEGAs_3: A program for calculating dark matter observables (2013, methodology): “In earlier micrOMEGAs versions, the strange quark content was extracted using the operator σ0 = ml〈p|ūu+d̄d−2s̄s|p〉, this method leads to large uncertainties in the strange quark content and in the direct detection rate [75, 76].”
The impact of priors and observables on parameter inferences in the constrained MSSM (2008, background): “(There still remain hadronic uncertainties which can change � SI p by up to a factor of ten [ 53 ].) It was shown that, with flat priors, the strong preference for the FP region leads to a rather”
Focus Point Supersymmetry Redux (2011, background): “05, and so the strange quark contribution dominates the direct detection cross section [42].”
Recommendations on presenting LHC searches for missing transverse energy signals using simplified s-channel models of dark matter (2016, unknown): “[51]) and differ by up to O(5%).”
Flavor violating Higgs decays (2012, methodology): “The nucleon matrix elements f (q,p) ≡ 〈p|mq q̄q|p〉/mp are calculated according to [66], but using an updated value for the nucleon sigma term ΣπN = 55 MeV [67] (If the value of the nucleon sigma term is even smaller, as indicated by recent unquenched lattice results, our bounds would become weaker).”
Dark matter in the inert doublet model after the discovery of a Higgs-like boson at the LHC (2013, methodology): “This quantity is usually parametrized in terms of the so-called pion-nucleon sigma term σπN [67].”
Non-relativistic effective theory of dark matter direct detection (2010, background): “A recent discussion of uncertainties in these quantities appears in [54].”