Implications for relic neutralinos of the theoretical uncertainties in the neutralino–nucleon cross section

Abstract

We discuss the effect induced on the neutralino-nucleon cross-section by the present uncertainties in the values of the quark masses and of the quark scalar densities in the nucleon. We examine the implications of this aspect on the determination of the neutralino cosmological properties, as derived from measurements of WIMP direct detection. We show that, within current theoretical uncertainties, the DAMA annual modulation data are compatible with a neutralino as a major dark matter component, to an extent which is even larger than the one previously derived. We also comment on implications of the mentioned uncertainties for experiments of indirect dark matter detection. *

Probing the supersymmetric parameter space by weakly interacting massive particle direct detection

“…The neutralino-nucleon cross section has been calculated with the formulae reported in Ref. [6,28]. As discussed in the introduction, this cross section suffers from significant uncertainties in the size of Higgs-quark-quark and squark-quark-neutralino couplings.…”

“…In this paper we use for these quantities what we have defined as set 1 and set 2 in Ref. [28] to which we refer for details. Here we only report the values of the quantities m q <qq > for the two sets: …”

“…These quantities are subject to sizeable uncertainties, as was stressed in Ref. [28], which triggered a reconsideration of this important point in a number of subsequent papers [12,13,29].…”

Gaugino mass nonuniversality and dark matter in supergravity, strings, and D-brane models

“…An analysis in this region requires a separate treatment and will be reported elsewhere [27]. Recent analyses [28,29] have pointed to the uncertainties in the quark masses and in the quark content of the nucleon that enter in analyses of dark matter. We give in this paper an independent analysis of the errors in the quark densities and compute their effects on dark matter.…”

“…The various determinations of σ πN , σ 0 and x using analyses of Ref. [33,34,35,36,37,28] are summarized in Table2. For σ πN one finds an average value of 48 ± 9 MeV, and for σ 0 an average value of 35.5 ± 6 MeV.…”