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Questions tagged [wimps]

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles

2 votes
0 answers
30 views

Lifetime of a WIMP [duplicate]

I have been watching videos of WIMP's and have a simple question.. The larger the particles, the shorter their lifetime. A top quark is so massive that it cannot form a "stable" bond with ...
Rick's user avatar
  • 2,706
2 votes
1 answer
335 views

Axion vs. WIMP / Is Axion a WIMP?

What is the difference between an Axion and a WIMP? A WIMP is just defined as a class of particles interacting via gravity and potentially via weak interaction (or a new force that is even weaker than ...
Welcome_Green's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
32 views

Can we have a FIMP (WIMP) dark matter produced via freeze-out(-in) mechanism?

In general, we study dark matter production via freeze-out or freeze-in, for instance. The former produces thermal dark matter particles which correspond to a class of particle called Weakly ...
Jacinto Paulo's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
395 views

How To Interpret Cross-Section vs. WIMP Mass Graph?

I'm a bit confused about how to interpret experimental data when it comes to dark matter. For example, in this figure from the XENON1T experiment, is it correct in saying that the upper bound for the ...
Matt's user avatar
  • 11
2 votes
1 answer
545 views

Exclusion plots

I am having issues in reading exclusion plots like the one in the picture below (It is a plot regarding WIMP searches). What does the lines from various experiments (such as CRESST or LUX) mean? I don'...
Pleba's user avatar
  • 21
3 votes
2 answers
603 views

What does the "weak scale" mean?

In dark matter research, one of the properties of WIMPs is that "Interactions only through the weak nuclear force and gravity, or possibly other interactions with cross-sections no higher than ...
Jack the Ranger's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
159 views

What are the exclusion limits on WIMPs?

As I understand the way dark matter WIMP exclusion plots work, they are cross-sections (usually 2D) of the fuzzy boundary surface of a hyperdimensional property space, defining a fuzzy volume of that ...
James Bowery's user avatar
  • 1,357
1 vote
1 answer
320 views

Shape of exclusion plots of WIMP

What is the reason why the exclusion plots of WIMP experiments have that "U" like shape? And what sets the minimum of the curve?
JohnDoe122's user avatar
1 vote
4 answers
90 views

Could A Stray Radioactive Particle Collide With an Atom in a Human, Causing a Cascade?

I'm not thinking of even particles from a nuclear power-plant or man-made event. If a high-velocity highly-interacting particle made it through all the natural protections that keep life in a non-...
Taylor Blackstone's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
192 views

Dark matter in the time window between freeze-out and kinetic decoupling

Background After the freeze-out, when all annihilations have stopped, the abundance ($Y=\frac{n}{s}$) of thermal dark matter species no longer changes with time. However, it is still kept in kinetic ...
SRS's user avatar
  • 26.8k
1 vote
1 answer
110 views

What crystals are being used in this project to detect dark matter?

I recently read an article about "groundbreaking Australian research in the hunt for dark matter", in which it said: We use highly purified crystals to detect dark matter. These crystals ...
Chappo Hasn't Forgotten's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
737 views

Why use xenon in the search for dark matter?

The XENON dark matter research project is an interesting long-running project that strives to detect dark matter. I understand that the basic principle of the project design is that WIMPs are expected ...
user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
426 views

Black dwarf stars and dark matter

Today we understand that a black dwarf star represents a hypothetical star that is the result of the complete consumption of the energy of a white dwarf which is the remnant of a star of little or ...
jormansandoval's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
53 views

How can I understand the reaction rate of WIMP dark matter intuitively?

I'm reading a cosmology textbook(sorry it's Japanese) and stacked at statement that If the mass of WIMP is enough smaller than 100GeV, the reaction rate is represented as $\langle \sigma_a |\mathbf{\...
astro0926's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
539 views

What formula is used to make exclusion plot in the direct detection of dark matter?

The idea of direct detection of dark matter is that a dark matter particle striking some underground target will cause the target nucleus to recoil. From the recoil, one can determine the scattering ...
SRS's user avatar
  • 26.8k

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