The Nuclear Physics of Dark Matter Direct Detection

Abstract:  A great deal of effort is being expended to develop detectors capable of identifying heavy dark matter particles through the nuclear recoils they induce when scattering in ordinary matter. An interesting question is what can and cannot be learned about the underlying particle physics of dark matter from such experiments. I describe an approach in which the tools of effective theory are used to determine both nucleon-level and nuclear-level operators for this process. The unusual kinematics -- energy transfers are minimal while momentum transfers are large, on the scale of the inverse nuclear size -- makes the nuclear response more interesting than one might naively assume.