Nuclear σ terms and scalar-isoscalar WIMP-nucleus interactions from lattice QCD
Author(s)
Beane, S. R.; Cohen, S. D.; Lin, H.-W.; Savage, M. J.; Detmold, William
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It has been argued that the leading scalar-isoscalar weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) -nucleus interactions receive parametrically enhanced contributions in the context of nuclear effective field theories [1]. These contributions arise from meson-exchange currents (MECs) and potentially modify the impulse approximation estimates of these interactions by 10%–60%. We point out that these MECs also contribute to the quark mass dependence of nuclear binding energies, that is, nuclear σ terms. In this work, we use recent lattice QCD calculations of the binding energies of the deuteron, [superscript 3]He and [superscript 4]He at pion masses near 500 and 800 MeV, combined with the experimentally determined binding energies at the physical point, to provide approximate determinations of the σ terms for these light nuclei. For each nucleus, we find that the deviation of the corresponding nuclear σ term from the single-nucleon estimate is at the few-percent level, in conflict with the conjectured enhancement. As a consequence, lattice QCD calculations currently indicate that the cross sections for scalar-isoscalar WIMP-nucleus interactions arising from fundamental WIMP interactions with quarks do not suffer from significant uncertainties due to enhanced MECs.
Date issued
2014-04Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of PhysicsJournal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Beane, S. R., S. D. Cohen, W. Detmold, H.-W. Lin, and M. J. Savage. “Nuclear σ Terms and Scalar-Isoscalar WIMP-Nucleus Interactions from Lattice QCD.” Phys. Rev. D 89, no. 7 (April 2014). © 2014 American Physical Society
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1550-7998
1550-2368