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FIZIKA B 17 (2008) 1, 99 - 116
 
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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