Doubts About COGENT and DAMA Dark Matter Results

From a comment at Resonaances:

JK said...
Also interesting in this context is the CoGeNT talk at TAUP: http://taup2011.mpp.mpg.de/php/downloadPresentationFile.php?type=presentation&sessionid=5&presentationid=280

According to that talk part of the CoGeNT excess is probably due to surface backgrounds. Effectively, this moves the CoGeNT-allowed region to higher masses and smaller cross sections.

Also, Collar & company have re-measured quenching factors in NaI(Tl) (DAMA's target material). According to their results, which are in some tension with older measurements, the quenching factor for Na recoils is *smaller* than what was assumed by DAMA. This would move the DAMA-allowed region to the right.

So, the picture of DM direct detection has changed quite a bit this week, but it looks still as confusing as ever.

8 September 2011 13:55

Both the results reduce the apparent convergence around 10 GeV of mass of results between COGENT, DAMA and CRESS, the three experiments that have seen what could have been direct dark matter detection signals.