DAMA vs. the annually modulated muon background

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether the annual modulation observed by DAMA could be caused by muon flux variations underground, analyzing correlations and statistical constraints to test this hypothesis.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison between DAMA's signal and muon flux, proposing a method for DAMA to falsify the muon hypothesis through baseline count rate data.

Findings

Strong correlation between muon flux and DAMA signal.

Statistical constraints challenge muon-induced explanations.

DAMA can test the muon hypothesis with baseline count rates.

Abstract

We compare the DAMA signal to the muon flux underground, which is annually modulated due to temperature variations in the stratosphere. We show that the muon flux at LNGS and the DAMA signal are tightly correlated. Different mechanisms were proposed in the literature by which muon-induced events may dominate the signal region in DAMA. We discuss simple statistical constraints on such mechanisms and show that the DAMA collaboration can falsify the muon hypothesis, if it is wrong, by reporting their annual baseline count rates.