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DAMA/LIBRA and dark matter: decisive tension or contrived cancellation

Giorgio Busoni, Jonathan M. Cornell, Will Handley, Felix Kahlhoefer, Anders Kvellestad, Masen Pitts, Lauren Street, Aaron C. Vincent, Martin White

Abstract

We assess the tension between DAMA/LIBRA and the latest dark matter annual modulation results from the ANAIS-112 and COSINE-100 NaI experiments, under a range of hypotheses ranging from physical to general parameterisations. We find that, in the most physically-motivated cases, the tension between DAMA and these other NaI experiments exceeds 5$σ$. Lowering the tension to reasonable values requires significant tuning, such as overfitting with large numbers of free parameters, and opposite-sign modulation between recoil signals on sodium versus iodine.

DAMA/LIBRA and dark matter: decisive tension or contrived cancellation

Abstract

We assess the tension between DAMA/LIBRA and the latest dark matter annual modulation results from the ANAIS-112 and COSINE-100 NaI experiments, under a range of hypotheses ranging from physical to general parameterisations. We find that, in the most physically-motivated cases, the tension between DAMA and these other NaI experiments exceeds 5. Lowering the tension to reasonable values requires significant tuning, such as overfitting with large numbers of free parameters, and opposite-sign modulation between recoil signals on sodium versus iodine.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 1 section, 10 equations, 2 figures, 3 tables.

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Comparison of experimental data to the predicted rates at the best-fit points of selected fits.
  • Figure 2: Best-fit nuclear recoil spectra necessary to produce "only" a 3$\sigma$ tension between DAMA/LIBRA and COSINE+ANAIS, using the polynomial-exponential parametrisation \ref{['eq:polyexp']} (solid lines), and binned (2$\sigma$ tension, dashed lines) with 10 times 2 bins. The pathological opposite-sign recoil between Na and I is generic of models that improve the overall fit.