"Gusts in the headwind: uncertainties in direct dark matter detection" - Lawrence et al. (2023)

September 16, 2023Alan Duffy

The last paper of the extraordinary Thesis of my student (now Dr!) Grace Lawrence focussed on the challenges of dark matter detectors on Earth (particularly those like the SABRE project I have been involved in for many years). We have a simple picture in mind in which the dark matter is a cloud within which the galaxy (and our own Sun!) turns, meaning from the perspective of the Solar System there is a constant ‘wind’ of dark matter rushing towards us - which is our motion through it - familiar to anyone who has put their hand out of the car window and felt that wind even on the stillest of days. The issue is that we have many ‘gusts’ in that wind of dark matter as it is far from a smooth and still cloud of particles and instead has a history of cannibalised galaxies that retain their clumpy structure in the dark matter streams to this day drastically complicating the interpretation of any future discovery!