Questions tagged [wimps]
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
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Lifetime of a WIMP [duplicate]
I have been watching videos of WIMP's and have a simple question..
The larger the particles, the shorter their lifetime. A top quark is so massive that it cannot form a "stable" bond with ...
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Axion vs. WIMP / Is Axion a WIMP?
What is the difference between an Axion and a WIMP?
A WIMP is just defined as a class of particles interacting via gravity and potentially via weak interaction (or a new force that is even weaker than ...
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Can we have a FIMP (WIMP) dark matter produced via freeze-out(-in) mechanism?
In general, we study dark matter production via freeze-out or freeze-in, for instance. The former produces thermal dark matter particles which correspond to a class of particle called Weakly ...
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How To Interpret Cross-Section vs. WIMP Mass Graph?
I'm a bit confused about how to interpret experimental data when it comes to dark matter. For example, in this figure from the XENON1T experiment, is it correct in saying that the upper bound for the ...
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Exclusion plots
I am having issues in reading exclusion plots like the one in the picture below (It is a plot regarding WIMP searches). What does the lines from various experiments (such as CRESST or LUX) mean? I don'...
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What does the "weak scale" mean?
In dark matter research, one of the properties of WIMPs is that "Interactions only through the weak nuclear force and gravity, or possibly other interactions with cross-sections no higher than ...
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What are the exclusion limits on WIMPs?
As I understand the way dark matter WIMP exclusion plots work, they are cross-sections (usually 2D) of the fuzzy boundary surface of a hyperdimensional property space, defining a fuzzy volume of that ...
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Shape of exclusion plots of WIMP
What is the reason why the exclusion plots of WIMP experiments have that "U" like shape? And what sets the minimum of the curve?
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Could A Stray Radioactive Particle Collide With an Atom in a Human, Causing a Cascade?
I'm not thinking of even particles from a nuclear power-plant or man-made event. If a high-velocity highly-interacting particle made it through all the natural protections that keep life in a non-...
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Dark matter in the time window between freeze-out and kinetic decoupling
Background
After the freeze-out, when all annihilations have stopped, the abundance ($Y=\frac{n}{s}$) of thermal dark matter species no longer changes with time. However, it is still kept in kinetic ...
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What crystals are being used in this project to detect dark matter?
I recently read an article about "groundbreaking Australian research in the hunt for dark matter", in which it said:
We use highly purified crystals to detect dark matter. These crystals ...
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Why use xenon in the search for dark matter?
The XENON dark matter research project is an interesting long-running project that strives to detect dark matter. I understand that the basic principle of the project design is that WIMPs are expected ...
user21380
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black dwarf stars and dark matter
Today we understand that a black dwarf star represents a hypothetical star that is the result of the complete consumption of the energy of a white dwarf which is the remnant of a star of little or ...
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How can I understand the reaction rate of WIMP dark matter intuitively?
I'm reading a cosmology textbook(sorry it's Japanese) and stacked at statement that
If the mass of WIMP is enough smaller than 100GeV, the reaction rate is represented as $\langle \sigma_a |\mathbf{\...
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What formula is used to make exclusion plot in the direct detection of dark matter?
The idea of direct detection of dark matter is that a dark matter particle striking some underground target will cause the target nucleus to recoil. From the recoil, one can determine the scattering ...
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Why heavy bosons are unstable?
I'm working with dark matter and in the some of concepts is that shall exist WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) in which are made by baryons... However, we know that this cannot satisfy the ...
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Overlap between experimental searches for axion and WIMP dark matter
Are there experiments which search for WIMPs that also set limits for the axion? I'm doing a literature review on axions, and I've been told I should include a brief overview of WIMP searches as they ...
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When and where was WIMP dark matter formed?
Is the formation of WIMP dark matter confined to the high number densities associated with the early stages of the formation of the universe or are conditions in the collisions of black holes such ...
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Search for WIMPs
Apparently one means of detecting WIMPs is to search for a photon ejected when one interacts with matter. If we don't know its mass or velocity and the weak interaction implies the absence of charge, ...
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Spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions of the dark matter
What is meant by spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions of the dark matter with the nuclei?
How is the interaction between nucleus and DM modeled?
What can we conclude if the DM-nuclei ...
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Direct Dark Matter Detection: relative velocity between WIMPs & Nuclei
In direct dark matter detection it is said that the relative velocity between the WIMPs, which form a DM halo, and the target nuclei on earth is of order $100 \frac{\text{km}}{\text{s}}$. How does one ...
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How do funnels hinder (help?) detection of dark matter?
I came across some a new (to me) bit of terminology at a seminar recently. In the context of dark matter scattering off of atomic nuclei (but I think it may apply more generally for any particle ...
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ΧΕΝΟΝ1Τ: Will it fail to discover DM? Why is it necessary? What benefits for society?
Since a new experiment (ΧΕΝΟΝ1Τ) will take place in Italy to directly detect WIMPs and since there are already many experiments trying to do the same or something similar (e.g. CERN LHC, LUX, CoGent, ...
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Do clouds of dark matter cool and contract?
If dark matter participates in the weak interaction, clouds could cool via thermal neutrino radiation...?
And even if does not participate in the weak interaction, clouds should contract via ...
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Why should we expect dark matter with weak scale masses?
The WIMP "miracle" is often used to motivate WIMPs: that a WIMP with a weak-scale mass naturally freezes out of thermal equilibrium after the big bang with the right relic abundance. I ...
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WIMP dark matter annihilation rate equation (approximation)?
WIMP is a possible dark matter candidates, which self-annihilates.
What is the WIMP annihilation rate, as a function of density? Most sources state this scales as $\rho^2$, (density squared), but ...
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WIMPs - would they be charged?
I'm no expert in this stuff, it's just a hobby to me, but I've been reading up on the WIMP theory a bit - layman articles, not published research.
From Wiki on Dark Matter:
It also cannot ...
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Interpretation of the WIMP annihilation cross section graph
I have some trouble in the interpretation of the WIMP cross-section annihilation versus their mass.
I understand that the lines represent a upper bound on the cross section from the observation. But ...
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Is cold dark matter made of Higgs bosons?
This paper (2010) hypothesizes that Higgs bosons might be absolutely stable, allowing them to serve as a cold dark matter candidate:
The Higgs boson is in the backbone of the standard model of ...
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What determines the shape of the WIMP cross-section vs mass limit curves?
In figure 5 of arXiv:1310.8214v1, the experiments all seem to reach the lowest cross-sections when the WIMP is in the $40-100\, \mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ range. What is the physical reason for the scale of ...
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What exactly are super WIMPs?
I recently got confused (and slightly annoyed by the lack of technical details) when reading a popular article (authored by Jonathan Feng and Mark Trodden) introducing the concept of super WIMPs.
The ...
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Temperature of WIMPs
As a dark matter candidate, what should be the temperature and kinetic energy (or also the speed) of the WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) to agree with the observed distribution of dark ...
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More on matter and anti-matter
Does every particle that has rest mass also have an anti-particle with which it would annihilate?
Does annihilation only occur between like particles? For example what happens if a antineutron (anti ...
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