DAMA vs. the annually modulated muon background

Abstract

We compare the DAMA signal to the muon flux underground, which is annually modulated due to temperature variations in the stratosphere. We show that the muon flux at LNGS and the DAMA signal are tightly correlated. Different mechanisms were proposed in the literature by which muon-induced events may dominate the signal region in DAMA. We discuss simple statistical constraints on such mechanisms and show that the DAMA collaboration can falsify the muon hypothesis, if it is wrong, by reporting their annual baseline count rates.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• The DAMA/LIBRA apparatus
• One Model Explains DAMA/LIBRA, CoGENT, CDMS, and XENON
• A testable conventional hypothesis for the DAMA-LIBRA annual modulation

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• Elastic scattering signals of solar neutrinos with enhanced baryonic currents
• Model-independent comparison of annual modulation and total rate with direct detection experiments
• Muon-induced neutrons do not explain the DAMA data
• GEM-based TPC with CCD Imaging for Directional Dark Matter Detection
• The environmental monitoring system at the COSINE-100 experiment
• Contamination of Dark Matter Experiments from Atmospheric Magnetic Dipoles
• Monthly Modulation in Dark Matter Direct-Detection Experiments
• Common origin of superluminal neutrinos and DAMA annual modulation
• On the Cosmic Ray Muon Hypothesis for DAMA