Non-relativistic effective theory of dark matter direct detection

By JiJi Fan, Michael J. Reece, Lian-tao Wang. 2010

337 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Dark matter direct detection searches for signals coming from dark matter scattering against nuclei at a very low recoil energy scale ∼ 10 keV. In this paper, a simple non-relativistic effective theory is constructed to describe interactions between dark matter and nuclei without referring to any underlying high energy models. It contains the minimal set of operators that will be tested by direct detection. The effective theory approach highlights the set of distinguishable recoil spectra that could arise from different theoretical models. If dark matter is discovered in the near future in direct detection experiments, a measurement of the shape of the recoil spectrum will provide valuable information on the underlying dynamics. We bound the coefficients of the operators in our non-relativistic effective theory by the null results of current dark matter direct detection experiments. We also discuss the mapping between the non-relativistic effective theory and field theory models or operators, including aspects of the matching of quark and gluon operators to nuclear form factors.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8995d83b25894ad5d30e982a2447e9413049880e

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Citations in the corpus

CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan (2019, methodology): “[275] used Planck data to derive the first CMB limits on the non-relativistic effective theory of DM-proton scattering—a framework developed by the directdetection community to characterize all available phenomenologies for scattering through a heavy mediator [276, 277, 278, 279].”
Lectures on Dark Matter Physics (2016, background): “2 Differential Scattering Cross Section Now, we turn to deriving the differential scattering cross section for the DM-nucleus interaction, taking an effective operator approach [73, 74].”
Dark matter models and direct detection (2019, background): “To do this, we can expand the operators according to the nonrelativistic symmetry of Galilean invariance [146, 147].”
Colloquium: Annual modulation of dark matter (2013, background): “In general, dark matter-nucleon interactions can be described by a nonrelativistic effective theory as detailed by Fan, Reece, and Wang (2010) and Fitzpatrick et al. (2013).”
Form factors for dark matter capture by the Sun in effective theories (2015, background): “The effective theory of dark matter-nucleon interactions [30, 31] predicts that 8 independent nuclear response functions — or form factors — can be generated in the dark matter scattering by nuclei.”
The Effective Field Theory of Dark Matter Direct Detection (2012, background): “Recently, [3] took a different approach, by considering the leading non-relativistic operators coupling DM to nuclei, and placing bounds on their”
Benchmarks for dark matter searches at the LHC (2014, background): “where the first sum runs over N = {n, p} and the second sum over the 12 most general DM/nucleon non-relativistic operators [9, 31].”
Toward (finally!) ruling out Z and Higgs mediated dark matter models (2016, neutral): “[21–30]).”
Galactic Searches for Dark Matter (2012, methodology): “The remaining interaction terms are suppressed by at least one power of the momentum or the velocity (e.g. Kurylov and Kamionkowski (2004) and Fan et al. (2010)).”