Direct Search for Dark Matter - Striking the Balance - and the Future

Understand

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the main candidates for the relic dark matter (DM).

• The idea of the direct DM detection relies on elastic spin-dependent (SD) and spin-independent (SI) interaction of WIMPs with target nuclei.
• In this review paper the relevant formulae for WIMP event rate calculations are collected.
• For estimations of the WIMP-proton and WIMP-neutron SD and SI cross sections the effective low-energy minimal supersymmetric standard model is used.