Speaker
Neil Spooner
(University of Sheffield)
Description
Astrophysical observations and cosmological data give overwhelming evidence that the majority of the mass of the Universe is comprised of dark matter. For over 15 years, the DAMA collaboration has asserted that they observe a dark matter-induced annual modulation in their data. Several alternative hypotheses have been proposed as explanations for the observation of an annual modulation however none can give the phase and amplitude observed in DAMA. In addition, several experiments using different technology and target material exclude WIMP-nucleon cross sections observed by DAMA for a wide range of WIMP models and distribution. I will describe the world-wide effort to resolve these seemingly contradicting results directly by using the same target material, NaI(Tl).
Author
Prof.
Reina Maruyama
(Yale University)
