Detecting the Milky Way's Dark Disk

Understand

In LambdaCDM, massive satellites are dragged into the disk-plane by dynamical friction where they dissolve into a stellar thick disk and a more massive dark matter disk.

• The distinctive kinematics of the dark disk matches the stars that also entered in the satellites.
• The lower velocities of the dark disk with respect to the Earth enhances detection rates at low recoil energy.
• For WIMP masses > 50 GeV/c^2, the detection rate increases by up to a factor of 3 in the 5 - 20 keV recoil energy range.