"The Inelastic Frontier of Dark Matter"

Speaker: 
Graham Kribs
Institution: 
Univ. of Oregon
Date: 
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Time: 
3:00 pm
Location: 
FRH 4135
 

 
ABSTRACT:
 
I'll discuss a well motivated possibility for dark matter to predominantly scatter inelastically off nuclei in direct detection experiments.  The generic expectations resulting from this assumption are explored, including both the degree of suppression of the scattering rate and the associated one-loop elastic scattering cross section. The current best bounds are determined from existing experiments, that turn out to include LUX, PICO, and CRESST due to each experiment utilizing a
(relatively) heavy element.  Several implications, including sizable recoil energy-dependent annual modulation, and improvements for future experiments are discussed.  In particular, xenon experiments can improve on the PICO results, if they were to analyze their existing data over a much larger range of recoil energies.
 

 
Host: 
Iftah Galon
Tim Tait