2011

Observations of annual modulation in direct detection of relic particles and light neutralinos

Belli, P., Bernabei, R., Bottino, A. et al.

Understand

The long-standing model-independent annual modulation effect measured by the DAMA Collaboration, which fulfills all the requirements of a dark matter annual modulation signature, and the new result by the CoGeNT experiment that shows a similar behavior are comparatively examined under the hypothesis of a dark matter candidate particle interacting with the detectors' nuclei by a coherent elastic process.

  • The ensuing physical regions in the plane of the dark matter-particle mass versus the dark matter-particle nucleon cross-section are derived for various galactic halo models and by taking into account the impact of various experimental uncertainties.
  • It is shown that the DAMA and the CoGeNT regions agree well between each other and are well fitted by a supersymmetric model with light neutralinos which satisfies all available experimental constraints, including the most recent results from CMS and ATLAS at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

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