obscura: A modular C++ tool and library for the direct detection of (sub-GeV) dark matter via nuclear and electron recoils

Understand

For the interpretation of past and future direct searches for dark matter (DM) particles, it is important to be able to provide accurate predictions for event rates and spectra under a variety of possible and viable assumptions in a computationally efficient way.

• While there exists a few tools to compute DM induced nuclear recoil spectra, 'obscura' is not limited to nuclear targets.
• Instead its main focus lies on sub-GeV DM searches probing electron recoils which typically requires methods from atomic and condensed matter physics.
• In the context of sub-GeV DM searches, new ideas such as target materials or detection techniques are being proposed regularly, and the theoretical modelling of these are getting improved continuously.