Halo-independence with quantified maximum entropy at DAMA/LIBRA

Andrew Fowlie*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Using the DAMA/LIBRA anomaly as an example, we formalise the notion of halo-independence in the context of Bayesian statistics and quantified maximum entropy. We consider an infinite set of possible profiles, weighted by an entropic prior and constrained by a likelihood describing noisy measurements of modulated moments by DAMA/LIBRA. Assuming an isotropic dark matter (DM) profile in the galactic rest frame, we find the most plausible DM profiles and predictions for unmodulated signal rates at DAMA/LIBRA. The entropic prior contains an a priori unknown regularisation factor, β, that describes the strength of our conviction that the profile is approximately Maxwellian. By varying β, we smoothly interpolate between a halo-independent and a halo-dependent analysis, thus exploring the impact of prior information about the DM profile.

Original languageEnglish
Article number002
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2017
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Oct 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • dark matter detectors
  • dark matter experiments

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