But what if it's not a WIMP? DM direct detection down to the MeV scale

Note: Note special day/time: Thursday, April 5 at 3:30 PM
Speaker: Jeremy Mardon, Stanford University

When: April 5, 2012 (Thu), 03:30PM to 04:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the Particle and Fields Seminar Series. Fridays from 2-3.

Abstract: Direct detection experiments are straining towards the goal of WIMP-dark-matter discovery, but appear completely insensitive to dark matter masses below a few GeV. With the world-superpower status of the WIMP paradigm under threat from null results, the inability to probe lighter dark-matter candidates would be unfortunate. I will re-examine the direct detection of light dark matter, and discuss how searching for DM--electron scattering allows the entire MeV to GeV range to be probed. Using single-electron data published by XENON10, I will present the first direct-detection limits in the MeV-GeV range, and discuss the prospects for future improvements.