Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Scientific paper
2011-10-18
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
31 pages, 14 figures
Scientific paper
The primary observable in dark matter direct detection is the spectrum of scattering events. We simulate multiple positive direct detection signals (on germanium, xenon, and argon targets) to explore the extent to which the underlying particle physics, manifested in the momentum dependence of the operator mediating the scattering, can be extracted. Taking into account realization (Poisson) noise, a single target nucleus with 300 events has limited power to discriminate operators with momentum dependence differing by $q^{\pm2}$ for a wide range of dark matter masses from 10 GeV to 1 TeV. With the inclusion of multiple targets (or a factor of several more events on a single target), the operator discrimination becomes very strong at the 95% C.L. for dark matter candidates of mass 50 GeV and above. On the other hand, operator discrimination remains poor for 10 GeV candidates until multiple experiments each collect 1000 or more events. We summarize our results with a figure of merit Y that is capable of discriminating the correct operator in a way that is largely insensitive to statistical effects.
McDermott Samuel D.
Yu Hai-Bo
Zurek Kathryn M.
No associations
LandOfFree
The Dark Matter Inverse Problem: Extracting Particle Physics from Scattering Events does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with The Dark Matter Inverse Problem: Extracting Particle Physics from Scattering Events, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Dark Matter Inverse Problem: Extracting Particle Physics from Scattering Events will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-293047