Searching for SUSY Dark Matter- The Directional Rate and the Modulation Effect

Abstract

The detection of dark matter is central to particle physics and cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a dark matter candidate, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). When combined with fairly well understood physics (quark structure of the nucleon and some nuclear structure, they yield direct event rates. The obtained rates are, however, very low. So we exploit characteristic signatures, like the modulation effect, i.e. the dependence of the rate on the earth's annual motion, and the directional rate, i.e its dependence on the direction of the recoiling nucleus, employing various velocity distributions, isothermal (symmetric and axially asymmetric) and non isothermal (due to to caustic rings).