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

Understand

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.