Determining the Mass of Dark Matter Particles with Direct Detection Experiments

Abstract

In this article I review two data analysis methods for determining the mass (and eventually the spin-independent cross section on nucleons) of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with positive signals from direct Dark Matter detection experiments: a maximum likelihood analysis with only one experiment and a model-independent method requiring at least two experiments. Uncertainties and caveats of these methods will also be discussed.

Comments: 24 pages, 10 figures, 1 reference added, typos fixed, published version, to appear in the NJP Focus Issue on "Dark Matter and Particle Physics"