First microscopic evaluation of spin-dependent WIMP-nucleus scattering off 183W

Abstract

We perform the first consistent calculation of elastic-scattering and inelastic-scattering structure functions for spin-dependent WIMP-nucleus scattering for 183W in a microscopic nuclear-theory framework. The nuclear structure calculations are performed in the microscopic interacting boson-fermion model (IBFM-2). Our results show that while 183W is very insensitive to spin-dependent elastic scattering, the structure function for inelastic scattering is quite sizable at small momentum transfers. Moreover, to our knowledge 183W provides the first studied case where inelastic scattering can compete with elastic scattering as the primary detection signal.