Target complementarity for direct dark matter detection

by David C Cerdeno (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)

Monday 27 May 2013, 16:30 → 17:30 Europe/Berlin

Building 2a, SR 2 (DESY Hamburg)

I will summarise the exciting experimental situation of direct dark matter searches and briefly review the theoretical basis. I will show how dark matter parameters (mass, spin-dependent (SD) and spin-independent (SI) scattering cross section off nucleons) can be extracted from these experiments and the role of astrophysical and nuclear uncertainties. I will argue that the combined observation of dark matter in various direct detection experiments can be used to determine the phenomenological properties of WIMP dark matter. A convenient choice of target materials, including nuclei that couple to dark matter particles through a significantly different ratio of SD vs SI interactions, could break the degeneracies in the determination of those parameters that a single experiment cannot discriminate. This can help discriminating among different models for WIMP dark matter.