Candidates for inelastic dark matter

By Yanou Cui, D. Morrissey, David Poland, L. Randall. 2009

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although we have yet to determine whether the DAMA data represents a true discovery of new physics, among such interpretations inelastic dark matter (IDM) can match the energy spectrum of DAMA very well while not contradicting the results of other direct detection searches. In this paper we investigate the general properties that a viable IDM candidate must have and search for simple models that realize these properties in natural ways. We begin by determining the regions of IDM parameter space that are allowed by direct detection searches including DAMA, paying special attention to larger IDM masses. We observe that an inelastic dark matter candidate with electroweak interactions can naturally satisfy observational constraints while simultaneously yielding the correct thermal relic abundance. We comment on several other proposed dark matter explanations for the DAMA signal and demonstrate that one of the proposed alternatives — elastic scattering of dark matter off electrons — is strongly disfavored when the modulated and unmodulated DAMA spectral data are taken into account. We then outline the general essential features of IDM models in which inelastic scattering off nuclei is mediated by the exchange of a massive gauge boson, and construct natural models in the context of a warped extra dimension and supersymmetry.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92737aacbc7346d7b46f25f7b7ba62a033daeb8c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. David Poland
2. P. Madau
3. Jure Zupan
4. T. Hambye
5. B. Moore
6. N. Weiner
7. Marcel Zemp
8. Joachim Kopp

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Michael Kuhlen
2. P. Madau
3. J. Diemand
4. L. Strigari
5. T. Schwetz
6. B. Moore
7. James S. Bullock
8. Romain Teyssier

Citations in the corpus

• Toward (finally!) ruling out Z and Higgs mediated dark matter models (2016, unknown): “[66, 67], the Lagrangian in this scenario takes the following form: L ⊃ 1 2 Ψ̄1iγ ∂μΨ1 − 1 2 (M −m+)Ψ̄1Ψ1 + 1 2 Ψ̄2iγ ∂μΨ2 − 1 2 (M +m+)Ψ̄2Ψ2 (4.”
• Abelian hidden sectors at a GeV (2009, background): “This requires an inelastic mass splitting on the order of 100 keV and an effective nucleon scattering cross-section in the range σn ∼ ( 10−40 − 10−38 ) cm2, assuming a single dominant dark matter component [12, 32–35, 81].”
• Global interpretation of direct Dark Matter searches after CDMS-II results (2009, background): “[21–26].”
• Dark matter direct detection with non-Maxwellian velocity structure (2009, background): “Recent studies [27, 25, 41, 42] have shown that iDM remains a viable explanation of the DAMA data, consistent with recent results from CDMS [43], XENON10 [44], KIMS [45], ZEPLIN II [46], ZEPLIN III [47] and CRESST [48].”
• Dark matter direct detection signals inferred from a cosmological N-body simulation with baryons (2009, methodology): “For detectors made of several elements, the total rate is the average of the rates Ri(t) for each component i, weighted by its mass fraction fi R(t) = ∑ i fiRi(t) (5) Finally the expected number of observed events per unit time is the product of the total rate times the detector mass Mdet.”
• Scalar multiplet dark matter (2009, background): “Although the electroweak phase transition in the SM is second order the phase transition, it occurs rather quickly (see e.g. [42] and Refs. therein) and for simplicity we will assume a sharp threshold for the freeze-out of our DM candidate.”