Taking Halo-Independent Dark Matter Methods Out of the Bin

Understand

We develop a new halo-independent strategy for analyzing emerging DM hints, utilizing the method of extended maximum likelihood.

• This approach does not require the binning of events, making it uniquely suited to the analysis of emerging DM direct detection hints.
• It determines a preferred envelope, at a given confidence level, for the DM velocity integral which best fits the data using all available information and can be used even in the case of a single anomalous scattering event.
• All of the halo-independent information from a direct detection result may then be presented in a single plot, allowing simple comparisons between multiple experiments.