Lowering the threshold in the DAMA dark matter detector

We look at two improvements related to the DAMA/LIBRA dark matter detector. We show how using a more optimized binning scheme of the current data can lead to significantly tighter contraints on the compatible regions of the WIMP parameter space. In addition, the PMT’s of the detector were upgraded in 2010, allowing the low energy threshold to be lowered from 2 keVee to 1 keVee. We examine the implications for the dark matter interpretion of the DAMA modulation with data in this new energy region. Specifically, we focus on how well the degeneracy between the low mass and high mass regions can be removed by this new data. We find that the lower threshold data should rule out one of the two mass ranges in the spin-independent case at a minimum of the 2.6σ level in the worst case scenario.