Scintillating bolometers: a key for determining WIMP parameters

Abstract

In the last decade direct detection Dark Matter (DM) experiments have increased enormously their sensitivity and ton-scale setups have been proposed, especially using germanium and xenon targets with double readout and background discrimination capabilities. In light of this situation, we study the prospects for determining the parameters of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) DM (mass, spin-dependent (SD) and spin-independent (SI) cross section off nucleons) by combining the results of such experiments in the case of a hypothetical detection. In general, the degeneracy between the SD and SI components of the scattering cross section can only be removed using targets with different sensitivities to these components. Scintillating bolometers, with particle discrimination capability, very good energy resolution and threshold and a wide choice of target materials, are an excellent tool for a multitarget complementary DM search. We investigate how the simultaneous use of scintillating targets with different SD-SI sensitivities and/or light isotopes (as the case of CaF2 and NaI) significantly improves the determination of the WIMP parameters. In order to make the analysis more realistic we include the effect of uncertainties in the halo model and in the spin-dependent nuclear structure functions, as well as the effect of a thermal quenching different from 1.

17 pages, 9 figures. To appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A. References updated

References in corpus (9)

• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• First results from DAMA/LIBRA and the combined results with DAMA/NaI
• Results from a Low-Energy Analysis of the CDMS II Germanium Data
• Constraints on Low-Mass WIMP Interactions on 19F from PICASSO
• Improved Limits on Spin-Dependent WIMP-Proton Interactions from a Two Liter CF${}_3$I Bubble Chamber
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• Complementarity of Dark Matter Direct Detection Targets
• WIMP identification through a combined measurement of axial and scalar couplings
• Low temperature light yield measurements in NaI and NaI(Tl)

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Global fits of the dark matter-nucleon effective interactions
• Analysis of the theoretical bias in dark matter direct detection
• Probing WIMP particle physics and astrophysics with direct detection and neutrino telescope data
• Bulk NaI(Tl) scintillation low energy events selection with the ANAIS-0 module
• Sensitivity of alkali halide scintillating calorimeters with particle identification to investigate the DAMA dark matter detection claim