Imperial College London
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ProfessorRobertoTrotta

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7793r.trotta Website CV

 
 
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Assistant

 

Mrs Sheila Ekudo +44 (0)20 7594 2086

 
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Location

 

1009Blackett LaboratorySouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Strege:2012:10.1103/PhysRevD.86.023507,
author = {Strege, C and Trotta, R and Bertone, G and Peter, AHG and Scott, P},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.86.023507},
journal = {Physical Review D},
title = {Fundamental statistical limitations of future dark matter direct detection experiments},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.023507},
volume = {86},
year = {2012}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - We discuss irreducible statistical limitations of future ton-scale dark matter direct detection experiments. We focus in particular on the coverage of confidence intervals, which quantifies the reliability of the statistical method used to reconstruct the dark matter parameters and the bias of the reconstructed parameters. We study 36 benchmark dark matter models within the reach of upcoming ton-scale experiments. We find that approximate confidence intervals from a profile-likelihood analysis exactly cover or overcover the true values of the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) parameters, and hence are conservative. We evaluate the probability that unavoidable statistical fluctuations in the data might lead to a biased reconstruction of the dark matter parameters, or large uncertainties on the reconstructed parameter values. We show that this probability can be surprisingly large, even for benchmark models leading to a large event rate of order a hundred counts. We find that combining data sets from two different targets leads to improved coverage properties, as well as a substantial reduction of statistical bias and uncertainty on the dark matter parameters
AU  - Strege,C
AU  - Trotta,R
AU  - Bertone,G
AU  - Peter,AHG
AU  - Scott,P
DO  - 10.1103/PhysRevD.86.023507
PY  - 2012///
SN  - 1550-7998
TI  - Fundamental statistical limitations of future dark matter direct detection experiments
T2  - Physical Review D
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.023507
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/29652
VL  - 86
ER  -
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