Informing dark matter direct detection limits with the ARTEMIS simulations

Understand

Dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments aim to place constraints on the DM--nucleon scattering cross-section and the DM particle mass.

• These constraints depend sensitively on the assumed local DM density and velocity distribution function.
• While astrophysical observations can inform the former (in a model-dependent way), the latter is not directly accessible with observations.
• Here we use the high-resolution ARTEMIS cosmological hydrodynamical simulation suite of 42 Milky Way-mass halos to explore the spatial and kinematical distributions of the DM in the solar neighbourhood, and we examine how these quantities are influenced by substructures, baryons, the presence of dark discs, as well as general halo-to-halo scatter (cosmic variance).