dmscatter: A Fast Program for WIMP-Nucleus Scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces 'dmscatter', a fast, modern Fortran program with a Python interface for calculating WIMP-nucleus scattering rates, accommodating complex nuclear responses and enabling efficient exploration of dark matter interaction scenarios.

Contribution

The authors developed a high-performance, user-friendly software tool that incorporates recent theoretical advances and nuclear data to improve modeling of dark matter detection experiments.

Findings

Efficient computation of WIMP-nucleus scattering rates.

Inclusion of extensive nuclear response functions.

Compatibility with current dark matter search practices.

Abstract

Recent work, using an effective field theory framework, has shown the number of possible couplings between nucleons and the dark-matter-candidate Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) is larger than previously thought. Inspired by an existing Mathematica script that computes the target response, we have developed a fast, modern Fortran code, including optional OpenMP parallelization, along with a user-friendly Python wrapper, to swiftly and efficiently explore many scenarios, with output aligned with practices of current dark matter searches. A library of most of the important target nuclides is included; users may also import their own nuclear structure data, in the form of reduced one-body density matrices. The main output is the differential event rate as a function of recoil energy, needed for modeling detector response rates, but intermediate results such as nuclear form factors can be readily accessed.