If dark matter is composed of new fundamental particles, Earth's orbital motion around the Sun may induce an annual modulation in the rate at which these particles interact in a… Click to show full abstract
If dark matter is composed of new fundamental particles, Earth's orbital motion around the Sun may induce an annual modulation in the rate at which these particles interact in a terrestrial detector. The DAMA collaboration has identified at a 12σ confidence level such an annual modulation in their event rate. One previously proposed explanation is `plasma dark matter' (e.g. mirror dark matter) which would have electron recoils in the detector from interactions via kinetic mixing. We perform a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test of this plasma dark matter model to DAMA/LIBRA modulation amplitude which rejects the hypothesis of plasma dark matter as an explanation of this data at greater than 7σ.
               
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