Terrestrial WIMP/Axion astronomy

Understand

Predicting signals in direct dark matter (DM) detection experiments requires an understanding of the astrophysical structure of the local halo.

• Any uncertainty in this understanding will feed directly into all experimental results.
• However our terrestrial experiments are in a position to study this same astrophysical dependence, and in fact represent our only probe of the local halo on sub-milliparsec scales.
• This is best achieved in the case of WIMP dark matter if directionally sensitive experiments are feasible, but requires novel parameterizations of the velocity distribution to make model independent claims.