GeV WIMPs scattering off of OH impurities cannot explain the DAMA signal

Abstract

In the presence of OH impurities in the DAMA crystals, GeV-scale WIMPs elastically scattering off of hydrogen nuclei with a spin independent cross section of $\sim 10^{-33}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ might explain the annual modulation observed by the DAMA experiment, while being consistent with other direct dark matter searches, as scattering would occur at energies below the energy threshold of other detectors. In this work we examine this possibility and show that, independent of the level of OH impurities in the DAMA crystals, for several reasons this scenario does not provide a viable explanation to the DAMA signal.

5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in JCAP

References in corpus (4)

• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• Results from a Search for Light-Mass Dark Matter with a P-type Point Contact Germanium Detector
• Towards Closing the Window on Strongly Interacting Dark Matter: Far-Reaching Constraints from Earth's Heat Flow
• Annual Modulation of Dark Matter in the Presence of Streams

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Dark Matter Complementarity and the Z${}^{\prime }$ Portal
• Model-independent comparison of annual modulation and total rate with direct detection experiments
• Excluding the Light Dark Matter Window of a 331 Model Using LHC and Direct Dark Matter Detection Data
• A New Possible Way to Explain the DAMA Results
• Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment in a $SU(4)\otimes U(1{)}_N$ Model
• Production and suppression of delayed light in NaI
• Inert scalar dark matter in an extra dimension inspired model