Current limits on the cold dark matter interaction cross section obtained by the UK collaboration

• Published in: Nuclear physics. Section B, Proceedings supplement Vol. 70; no. 1; pp. 74 - 78
• Main Authors: Sumner, T.J., Quenby, J.J., Bewick, A., Smith, N.J.T., Jones, W.G., Ali, T., Ahmed, B., Davidge, D., Davies, G.J., Howard, A., Joshi, M.K., Smith, P.F., Homer, G.J., Arnison, G.T.J., Lewin, J.D., Alner, G.J., Spooner, N.J., Thompson, L., Sellin, P., Walker, S., Roberts, J., Peak, C., Barton, J.C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 1999
• ISSN: 0920-5632; 1873-3832
• DOI: 10.1016/S0920-5632(98)00391-0

The UK Dark Matter Collaboration has run a 5–6 kg NaI detector in a well-shielded underground environment for about a year. Signatures of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) interactions are sought using pulse shape discrimination techniques by searching for the relatively short scintillation pulses arising from nuclear recoils among the residual, longer, background events from residual radioactivity in the detector and its environment. Here we report on an improvement to the limits on the CDM cross section for spin dependent interactions using our latest data from a crystal with improved detection efficiency and taking into account recent improved estimates of the spin factor correction between the nucleus and nucleon-supersymmetric particle cross sections.