Time-dependent rate of multicomponent dark matter: Reproducing the DAMA/LIBRA phase-2 results

Understand

The current paradigm for dark matter direct detection is to assume that the dark sector is solely composed of a single particle species.

• In this short paper, we make the observation that dark matter comprising both a light and a heavy component that modulate out of phase leads to interesting phenomenology in annual modulation experiments.
• For an illustrative example, we use the recently released DAMA/LIBRA phase-2 results with a lower energy threshold.
• Immediately after, it was argued that a one-component spin-independent dark matter explanation of the observed annual modulation is strongly disfavored or excluded unless isospin-violating couplings are invoked.