The impact of going beyond the Maxwell distribution in direct dark matter detection rates

Abstract

We consider direct dark matter detection rates and investigate the difference between a standard Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution and a "realistic" distribution like the ones extracted from numerical N-body simulations. Sizable differences are observed when such results are compared to the standard Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. For a light target both the total rate and the annual modulation are reduced by ~25%. For a heavy target the total rate is virtually unchanged, whereas the annual modulation is modified by up to 50%, depending on the WIMP mass and detector energy threshold. We also consider the effect of a possible velocity anisotropy, and the effect is found to be largest for a light target For the realistic velocity distribution the anisotropy may reduce the annual modulation, in contrast to the Maxwell-Boltzmann case.

13 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (5)

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• The nature of dark matter and the density profile and central behavior of relaxed halos
• Measuring the dark matter velocity anisotropy in galaxy clusters
• What it takes to measure a fundamental difference between dark matter and baryons: the halo velocity anisotropy
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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Measurement of the dark matter velocity anisotropy profile in galaxy clusters