Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of dark matter scattering off light nuclei
Lorenzo Andreoli
University of Trento and LANL
I will present our results for elastic scattering of dark matter (DM) particles off light nuclei (2H, 3H, 3He, 4He and 6Li). We focus on scalar-mediated DM-nucleus interactions and use scalar currents obtained to next-to-leading order in chiral effective theory. The nuclear ground states are obtained from a phenomenological nuclear Hamiltonian that includes the Argonne v18 two-body interaction and the three-body Urbana IX. Within this approach, we study the impact of one- and two-body currents and discuss the size of nuclear uncertainties, including for the first time two-body effects in A = 4,6 systems.