Unbinned halo-independent methods for emerging dark matter signals

Abstract

Halo-independent methods for analyzing direct detection experiments can provide robust results while making no assumptions about the dark matter halo in our galaxy. We extend existing methods to the case of unbinned data, which is especially well suited to emerging dark matter signals with only a few events in a nearly background-free environment. We show that such methods can easily be generalized to the case of inelastic or exothermic scattering, and provide a useful handle on extracting results independent of the halo model while maximizing the available experimental information.