Experimental Searches for NonBaryonic Dark Matter WIMP Direct Detection.pdf

1 Experimental Searches for Non-Baryonic Dark Matter: WIMP Direct Detection∗ Angel Morales† Laboratory of Nuclear and High Energy Physics and Canfranc Underground Laboratory (LSC) 1 University of Zaragoza 0 50009 Zaragoza. Spain 0 2 An overview of the current status of WIMP direct searches is presented, emphasizing strategies, achievements c e and prospects. D 7 1. Introduction with the recent efforts done in its direct search il- 2 lustrated by a few, selected experiments. 1 Experimental observations and robust theoret- Galactic halo WIMPs could be directly de- v ical arguments have established that our universe tected by measuring the nuclear recoil produced 0 is essentially non-visible, the luminous matter by their elastic scattering off target nuclei in suit- 5 scarcely accounting for one per cent of the en- able detectors at a rate which depends of the type 5 ergy density of a flat universe. The distribution of WIMP and interaction. In the case of WIMPs 2 of a flat universe (Ω = ΩM + ΩΛ = 1) attributes of m ∼ GeV to TeVand v ∼ 10−3c the nuclear re- 1 2 to the dark energy about ΩΛ ∼ 70%, whereas the coil in the laboratory frame ER = µ v2 (1 − cosθ) 1 M 0 matter density takes the remaining ΩM ∼ 30%, is in the range fro