A combined analysis of PandaX, LUX, and XENON1T experiments within the framework of dark matter effective theory

TL;DR

This paper combines data from PandaX, LUX, and XENON1T experiments within the dark matter effective theory framework to set joint limits on interaction couplings and new physics scales, accounting for astrophysical uncertainties.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive combined analysis of multiple experiments using effective theory, including isospin violation and high-scale new physics constraints.

Findings

Joint limits on effective couplings derived from combined data.

Updated bounds on new physics mass scales for dimension-five and dimension-six operators.

Inclusion of astrophysical uncertainties in the likelihood analysis.

Abstract

Weakly interacting massive particles are a widely well-probed dark matter candidate by the dark matter direct detection experiments. Theoretically, there are a large number of ultraviolet completed models that consist of a weakly interacting massive particle dark matter. The variety of models makes the comparison with the direct detection data complicated and often non-trivial. To overcome this, in the non-relativistic limit, the effective theory was developed in the literature which works very well to significantly reduce the complexity of dark matter-nucleon interactions and to better study the nuclear response functions. In the effective theory framework for a spin-1/2 dark matter, we combine three independent likelihood functions from the latest PandaX, LUX, and XENON1T data, and give a joint limit on each effective coupling. The astrophysical uncertainties of the dark matter distribution are also included in the likelihood. We further discuss the isospin violating cases of the interactions. Finally, for both dimension-five and dimension-six effective theories above the electroweak scale, we give updated limits of the new physics mass scales.