Halo-independence with quantified maximum entropy at DAMA/LIBRA

Abstract

Using the DAMA/LIBRA anomaly as an example, we formalise the notion of halo-independence in the context of Bayesian statistics and quantified maximum entropy. We consider an infinite set of possible protalks/, weighted by an entropic prior and constrained by a likelihood describing noisy measurements of modulated moments by DAMA/LIBRA. We find the most plausible dark matter (DM) profiles and predictions for unmodulated signal rates at DAMA/LIBRA. The entropic prior contains an a priori unknown regularisation factor, $\beta$, that describes the strength of our conviction that the profile is approximately Maxwellian. By varying $\beta$, we smoothly interpolate between a halo-independent and a halo-dependent analysis, thus exploring the impact of prior information about the DM profile.

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Kavli IMPU, Tokyo
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Andrew Fowlie
Assistant Professor

My research interests include particle physics and statistics.