# Strongly interacting dark matter and the DAMA signal

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that strongly interacting dark matter models designed to explain the DAMA signal cannot reproduce its observed time dependence, due to constraints from detection experiments and diffusion effects.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis showing the incompatibility of SIMP dark matter models with the DAMA signal's temporal modulation features.

## Key findings

- Models predict incorrect phase of annual modulation.
- Models predict larger diurnal modulation amplitude.
- Constraints from direct detection limit model parameters.

## Abstract

We show that models of strongly interacting (SIMP) dark matter built to reproduce the DAMA signal actually cannot account for its time dependence. We discuss the constraints on this type of models coming from direct detection experiments and study the propagation of thermalised dark matter particles in the ground for the allowed values of the parameters. We consider a simple 1D diffusion and a more detailed 3D diffusion. In both cases the predicted signal has either the wrong phase of the annual modulation or a much larger amplitude of the diurnal modulation.