Simulated Milky Way analogues: implications for dark matter direct searches

Journal Article · Sun May 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/05/024· OSTI ID:22667570

Bozorgnia, Nassim; Calore, Francesca; Lovell, Mark; Bertone, Gianfranco ^[1]; Schaller, Matthieu; Frenk, Carlos S.; Theuns, Tom ^[2]; Crain, Robert A. ^[3]; Navarro, Julio F. ^[4]; Schaye, Joop ^[5]

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1. GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1090 GL Amsterdam (Netherlands)
2. Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE (United Kingdom)
3. Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF (United Kingdom)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2 (Canada)
5. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden (Netherlands)

We study the implications of galaxy formation on dark matter direct detection using high resolution hydrodynamic simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies simulated within the EAGLE and APOSTLE projects. We identify Milky Way analogues that satisfy observational constraints on the Milky Way rotation curve and total stellar mass. We then extract the dark matter density and velocity distribution in the Solar neighbourhood for this set of Milky Way analogues, and use them to analyse the results of current direct detection experiments. For most Milky Way analogues, the event rates in direct detection experiments obtained from the best fit Maxwellian distribution (with peak speed of 223–289 km/s) are similar to those obtained directly from the simulations. As a consequence, the allowed regions and exclusion limits set by direct detection experiments in the dark matter mass and spin-independent cross section plane shift by a few GeV compared to the Standard Halo Model, at low dark matter masses. For each dark matter mass, the halo-to-halo variation of the local dark matter density results in an overall shift of the allowed regions and exclusion limits for the cross section. However, the compatibility of the possible hints for a dark matter signal from DAMA and CDMS-Si and null results from LUX and SuperCDMS is not improved.

• OSTI ID: 22667570
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 05 Vol. 2016; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPATIBILITY
CROSS SECTIONS
DENSITY
DETECTION
DIRECT CURRENT
DISTRIBUTION
GEV RANGE
HYDRODYNAMICS
MASS
MILKY WAY
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
RESOLUTION
ROTATION
SIMULATION
SPIN
VELOCITY