Identifying the theory of dark matter with direct detection
- School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study,Einstein Drive, Princeton NJ 08540 (United States)
- Whitman College,Walla Walla, WA 99362 (United States)
- C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics,Stony Brook, NY 11794 (United States)
- CCAPP and Department of Physics, The Ohio State University,191 W. Woodruff Ave., Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
- Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
Identifying the true theory of dark matter depends crucially on accurately characterizing interactions of dark matter (DM) with other species. In the context of DM direct detection, we present a study of the prospects for correctly identifying the low-energy effective DM-nucleus scattering operators connected to UV-complete models of DM-quark interactions. We take a census of plausible UV-complete interaction models with different low-energy leading-order DM-nuclear responses. For each model (corresponding to different spin–, momentum–, and velocity-dependent responses), we create a large number of realizations of recoil-energy spectra, and use Bayesian methods to investigate the probability that experiments will be able to select the correct scattering model within a broad set of competing scattering hypotheses. We conclude that agnostic analysis of a strong signal (such as Generation-2 would see if cross sections are just below the current limits) seen on xenon and germanium experiments is likely to correctly identify momentum dependence of the dominant response, ruling out models with either “heavy” or “light” mediators, and enabling downselection of allowed models. However, a unique determination of the correct UV completion will critically depend on the availability of measurements from a wider variety of nuclear targets, including iodine or fluorine. We investigate how model-selection prospects depend on the energy window available for the analysis. In addition, we discuss accuracy of the DM particle mass determination under a wide variety of scattering models, and investigate impact of the specific types of particle-physics uncertainties on prospects for model selection.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- SCOAP3, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
- OSTI ID:
- 22458419
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 12; Other Information: PUBLISHER-ID: JCAP12(2015)057; OAI: oai:repo.scoap3.org:13255; Article funded by SCOAP3. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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