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High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, hep-ph,Astrophysics, Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics, astro-ph.CO
Abstract:
We present halo-independent methods to analyze the results of dark matter
direct detection experiments assuming inelastic scattering. We focus on the
annual modulation signal reported by DAMA/LIBRA and present three different
halo-independent tests. First, we compare it to the upper limit on the
unmodulated rate from XENON100 using (a) the trivial requirement that the
amplitude of the annual modulation has to be smaller than the bound on the
unmodulated rate, and (b) a bound on the annual modulation amplitude based on
an expansion in the Earth's velocity. The third test uses the special
predictions of the signal shape for inelastic scattering and allows for an
internal consistency check of the data without referring to any astrophysics.
We conclude that a strong conflict between DAMA/LIBRA and XENON100 in the
framework of spin-independent inelastic scattering can be established
independently of the local properties of the dark matter halo.
