IFIC Seminar: Study of dark matter scattering off 2H and 4He nuclei within Chiral effective field theory

por Elena Filandri (ECT*)

martes 27 ene. 2026 12:00 → 14:00 Europe/Madrid

1001-Primera-1-1-1 - Paterna. Seminario (Universe)

We study dark matter, assumed to be composed by weak interacting massive particles (WIMPs), scattering off 2H and 4He nuclei. In order to parameterize the WIMP-nucleon interaction the chiral effective field theory approach is used. Considering only interactions invariant under parity, charge conjugation and time reversal, we examine five interaction types: scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial and tensor. Scattering amplitudes between two nucleons and a WIMP are determined up to the second order of chiral perturbation theory. We  apply this program to calculate the interaction rate as a function of the WIMP mass and of the magnitude of the WIMP-quark coupling constants. From our study, we conclude that the scalar nuclear response functions result much greater than the others due to their large combination of low energy constants. We verify that the leading order contributions are dominant in these low energy processes. We also provide an estimate for the background due to atmospheric neutrinos.