Halo-independence with quantified maximum entropy at DAMA/LIBRA

  • Event Date: 2017-10-12
  • Particle/String/Cosmology
  • Speaker: Dr. Andrew Fowlie (Monash University)  /  Host: Prof. Chong-Sun Chu (NTHU)
    Place: R521, 5F, 2nd General Building, Nat'l Tsing Hua Univ.

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 profiles, 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, β, that describes the strength of our conviction that the profile is approximately Maxwellian. By varying β, we smoothly interpolate between a halo-independent and a halo-dependent analysis, thus exploring the impact of prior information about the DM profile.