FIZIKA B 17 (2008) 1, 99 - 116

 size 289 kB

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NUCLEAR SPIN FOR DARK MATTER DETECTION

V. A. BEDNYAKOVa,b, M. A. NAZARENKOb and F. SIMKOVIC c

aDzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research,
141980 Dubna, Russia
bMoscow State Institute of Radioengineering, Electronics and Automation
(Technical University), 78, Vernadski Avenue, 119454 Moscow, Russia
cDepartment of Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina F1,
SK-842 15 Bratislava, Slovakia

Received 23 October 2007;        Accepted 20 February 2008
Online 18 June 2008

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the main candidates for the relic dark matter (DM). The idea of the direct DM detection relies on elastic spin-dependent (SD) and spin-independent (SI) interaction of WIMPs with target nuclei. In this paper, the importance of the SD WIMP-nucleus interaction for reliable DM detection is argued. The effective low-energy minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) is used for the calculation of the DM cross sections, provided the lightest neutralino is a WIMP. It is shown that the absolute lower bound for the rate of direct DM detection is due to the SD WIMP-nucleon interaction and a new-generation experiment aimed at detecting DM with sensitivity higher than 10-5 event/day/kg should have a non-zero-spin target to avoid missing of the DM signal.

PACS numbers: 95.35.+d, 12.60.Jv, 14.80.Ly
UDC 539.12

Keywords: dark matter, weakly interacting massive particle, supersymmetry, neutralino, nuclear spin matrix element

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