Speaker
Felix Kahlhoefer
(DESY, Hamburg)
Description
Abstract: The interpretation of dark matter direct detection experiments is complicated by the
fact that neither the astrophysical distribution of dark matter nor the properties of its particle
physics interactions with nuclei are known in detail. I will present a new framework that combines
the full formalism of non-relativistic effective interactions with state-of-the-art halo-independent
methods to deal with both of these issues in a very general way. This approach makes it possible
to analyze direct detection experiments for arbitrary DM interactions independent of astro-
physical uncertainties. I will demonstrate that the degeneracy between astrophysical
uncertainties and particle physics unknowns is not complete and therefore future direct detection
experiments will be able to infer at least some information on the coupling structure of dark
matter without the need to make assumptions on its astrophysical distribution.
