Constraints on dark matter-nucleon effective couplings in the presence of kinematically distinct halo substructures using the DEAP-3600 detector

Understand

DEAP-3600 is a single-phase liquid argon detector aiming to directly detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), located at SNOLAB (Sudbury, Canada).

• After analyzing data taken during the first year of operation, a null result was used to place an upper bound on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent, isoscalar cross section.
• This study reinterprets this result within a Non-Relativistic Effective Field Theory framework, and further examines how various possible substructures in the local dark matter halo may affect these constraints.
• Such substructures are hinted at by kinematic structures in the local stellar distribution observed by the Gaia satellite and other recent astronomical surveys.