2009/08/31 by Spencer Chang, Aaron Pierce, Neal Weiner · 125 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Coupling (piping) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Momentum (technical analysis) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phenomenology (philosophy) #Recoil #Scattering #Spectral line #WIMP #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2010/01/006
published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2010(01), 006 (Institute of Physics) · 7 pages, 7 figures, revtex4, published version
openalex publication_date 2010/01/04 · arxiv created 2010/08/16 · arxiv updated 2010/08/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It is usually assumed that WIMPs interact through spin-independent and spin-dependent interactions. Interactions which carry additional powers of the momentum transfer, q 2 , are assumed to be too small to be relevant. In theories with new particles at the ∼ GeV scale, however, these q 2 -dependent interactions can be large, and, in some cases dominate over the standard interactions. This leads to new phenomenology in direct detection experiments. Recoil spectra peak at non-zero energies, and the relative strengths of different experiments can be significantly altered. We present a simple parameterization for models of this type which captures much of the interesting phenomenology and allows a comparison between experiments. As an application, we find that dark matter with momentum dependent interactions coupling to the spin of the proton can reconcile the DAMA annual modulation result with other experiments.