Direct detection of fermionic and vector dark matter with polarised targets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how polarized targets can be used to distinguish between fermionic and vector dark matter particles through their scattering interactions, providing new theoretical calculations for cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces new calculations for polarized scattering cross sections for vector dark matter and refines existing results for fermionic dark matter, highlighting the potential for polarization to differentiate DM types.

Findings

Polarized targets can discriminate between fermionic and vector dark matter.

New explicit expressions for polarized scattering cross sections are provided.

First calculation of vector DM-nucleus scattering cross section with polarization.

Abstract

We study the scattering of Milky Way dark matter (DM) particles by spin-polarised target nuclei within a set of simplified models for fermionic and vector DM where DM interacts with spin 1/2 point-like nuclei through the exchange of a vector or pseudo-vector mediator particle. This study is motivated by the possibility of using polarised targets to gain novel insights into the nature of DM. For fermionic DM, we provide an explicit expression for the polarised DM-nucleus scattering cross section refining previous results found in the literature. For vector DM, we calculate the polarised cross section for DM-nucleus scattering for the first time. We find that polarised targets can in principle be used to discriminate fermionic from vector DM.