2015/08/29 by R. Foot, Foot, R. · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph.GA #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1508.07402
This paper used an oversimplified description of a complex problem which is unlikely to be very useful. A better description is given in 1512.06471, which supersedes this paper
openalex publication_date 2015/08/29 · arxiv created 2016/06/29 · arxiv updated 2016/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
For many years annually modulating ∼ keV scintillations have been observed in the DAMA/NaI and DAMA/Libra experiments. A dark matter - electron scattering interpretation is now favoured given the stringent constraints on nuclear recoil rates obtained by LUX, SuperCDMS and other experiments. Very recently, the XENON100 experiment has observed a modest annual modulation in their electron recoil events (2.8 σ C.L.) with phase consistent with that of the DAMA experiments. However, they also found a stringent upper limit on the unmodulated rate, which suggests that any dark matter - electron scattering interpretation of these annual modulations must involve a large modulation fraction \stackrel>∼ 50%. Here we discuss the extent to which these results might be able to be accommodated within multi-component dark matter models featuring light dark matter particles of mass ∼ MeV, focusing on the mirror dark matter case for definiteness. The importance of diurnal variation as a means of testing these kinds of models is also discussed.